The Empty Office Was a Myth. AI Just Moved the Work Underground.
The prediction was that AI would empty the building. What happened was stranger and quieter.
Two years ago the story was simple: AI takes the jobs, the office goes dark, the parking lot grows weeds. That did not happen, and the reason is interesting.
What happened instead is that a lot of junior, repetitive work moved. Not to nobody, but to fewer people doing more, often as contractors, often invisible in the org chart.
The building is not empty. The headcount is just fuzzier. The person who used to be "analyst" is now "analyst plus AI plus three vendors," and the spreadsheet does not show the second two.
This is why the employment numbers look weird. The disruption is real but it is hiding in job titles and contract counts instead of layoff press releases.
If you are planning for AI, plan for reorganization, not evacuation. The work remains. The shape of who does it is the part that keeps changing.