The concern that AI will replace jobs now accompanies every major digitization project in purchasing, and it is based on figures that cannot be ignored.

For example, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, one of the leading US HR and outplacement consultancies, has listed artificial intelligence as a separate reason for job cuts since 2023 and counted 116,175 announcements in the US by August 2026, representing around 22 percent of all reductions for that year, compared to 54,836 for the entire year of 2025. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shows that the employment rate of 20- to 24-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs fell from 16.4 percent to 15.5 percent between November 2022 and September 2025, with this decline not being due to layoffs but rather to young people not being hired for these roles in the first place (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, January 2026).

While these are possible scenarios, other data paints a different picture.

Forrester predicts around 6 percent job losses due to automation in the US by 2030, considers widespread displacement unlikely and instead expects an enrichment of about 20 percent of jobs, coupled with the explicit warning that over-automation driven by hype will lead to costly reversals.

Furthermore, the European Investment Bank examined over 12,000 European non-financial companies and found that the introduction of AI leads to approximately 4 percent higher labor productivity, without any indication of declining employment (EIB Working Paper 2026/02, AI adoption, productivity and employment: Evidence from European firms). For Germany, the IAB's scenario analysis concludes that after 15 years, around 790,000 additional jobs will be created and a similar number will be lost, so that overall employment will remain roughly at the same level as without AI implementation, while around 1.6 million jobs will be affected by structural change (IAB Research Report 23/2025, Section 3.3). Moreover, it is hoped that increased use of AI will offer opportunities for economic growth and prosperity, as well as counteract Germany's democratic transformation. Accordingly, there seems to be great hope that technological solutions can compensate for the shortage of skilled workers. As these sources show, a shift is taking place, but there is little reason to expect a total loss of work.

Procurement occupies a special position within this debate, as a trend can be observed here where the scope of tasks has been growing for years, while team size remains the same – or even decreases. Therefore, those who automate order processing, status updates, and data maintenance free up time for tasks for which there was previously no time, such as supplier development, negotiation preparation, risk assessment, and the increasing regulatory requirements.

In addition, there is a task that is generally new in the age of AI: Every AI result requires expert review; every agent needs someone to set it up, define its rules, review its results, and decide where human approval remains mandatory. This orchestration is a task for specialists; in our case, only the purchasing department can assess whether a proposal fits the supplier strategy, the product group, and the risk profile.

The coming months and years of AI development, with its effects on the labor market, remain exciting, making it worthwhile to regularly review the available data. At the same time, the sources mentioned above clearly indicate that, based on the data currently available to us, we don't need to be overly concerned about our jobs.