AI Is Eating Jobs: McKinsey’s Robot Army and What It Means for the Future of Work

A major consulting firm just revealed something that should make everyone sit up and take notice. McKinsey & Company, one of the most influential strategy firms in the world, now counts 25,000 of its “employees” as AI agents—not humans.

The firm’s CEO, Bob Sternfels, shared this at a recent tech event. He said McKinsey’s total workforce is now around 60,000. Out of that:

– 35,000 are real people
– 25,000 are AI agents

Just a few years ago (around 2023), the company had roughly 45,000 human employees. That means the number of people has dropped by about 10,000, while the total “headcount” jumped by 15,000 thanks entirely to AI.

How Did This Happen So Fast?

It wasn’t one big layoff announcement. The change came quietly through normal attrition (people leaving on their own), fewer new hires for certain roles, and AI taking over repetitive tasks. Things like:

– Pulling together large amounts of data
– Creating charts and slides
– Running basic analyses
– Summarizing long documents

All of these used to take junior consultants many hours. Now AI agents do them in seconds or minutes.

The remaining human staff focus on higher-level work: building client relationships, shaping big-picture strategy, and making sure the AI outputs are correct and useful. The CEO has even said the goal is to reach parity soon—roughly one AI agent for every human employee.

Why This Matters Beyond McKinsey

McKinsey isn’t just any company. It advises the largest corporations, banks, governments, and tech giants on how to run their businesses. When the firm that tells everyone else how to become more efficient starts replacing large parts of its own workforce with AI, it sends a very clear signal:

The same playbook is likely coming to many other white-collar industries.

Jobs that involve:

– Writing reports
– Doing research
– Creating presentations
– Basic financial modeling
– Data summarization
– Routine legal or compliance checks

…are already being automated at speed.

The Two Sides of the Future

On one hand, this is powerful. Companies become faster and cheaper to run. Humans get freed from boring, repetitive work and can focus on creative, strategic, or relationship-based tasks. Productivity can skyrocket.

On the other hand, the transition looks painful for millions of people. When entire categories of entry-level and mid-level office jobs shrink quickly, not everyone can instantly move into the “higher-value” roles that remain. Reskilling takes time, and not every industry or person will keep up at the same pace.

McKinsey’s own numbers show how rapidly this can scale: from almost zero AI “employees” to 25,000 in roughly two years. That kind of speed suggests the next wave of change could arrive even faster as the technology improves and becomes cheaper.

Bottom Line

We are no longer talking about AI as something that “might happen one day.” At one of the most prestigious knowledge-work companies on the planet, AI agents already make up over 40% of the workforce.

This isn’t science fiction anymore.
It’s January 2026, and the experiment is live.

The real question now is not whether AI will change jobs—it already is.
The question is how fast, how wide, and who will be ready when the next layer of work gets automated.

What do you think comes next? Share your thoughts.

Comments

comments