EY published the fourth wave of its AI Pulse Survey based on fieldwork conducted in September and October 2025, surveying senior US business leaders. The report finds that AI-driven productivity gains are increasingly being reinvested into further AI capability, R&D, cybersecurity, and workforce retraining, rather than primarily driving headcount reductions as some earlier commentary had anticipated.
The survey's repeated-wave structure allows for direct quarter-over-quarter tracking of how executive sentiment about AI's workforce impact has shifted across 2025 and 2026.