Nearly one in five U.S. workers say they have experienced a workplace reversal that could signal a new trend in the labor force: their employer replaced them with AI, only to ask them to return later, according to new research from talent assessment firm SHL.
The phenomenon, which SHL calls “AI rebounding,” shows an early indication that some companies may be discovering the limitations of replacing human employees with AI.
“Organizations are making fast, sometimes myopic, decisions about their people based on an incomplete picture of what their employees can do with or without AI,” Lucy Beaumont, global senior vice president of product and design at SHL, said in a press release. “AI rebounding is what happens when a company automates a role before it has genuinely assessed the human capability inside it. The AI doesn’t deliver, the gap becomes obvious, and the business ends up rehiring the same experts they just let go of, at a far greater cost.”
The survey, conducted in June and July, found that 19.1% of American respondents said they had personally been replaced by AI and were subsequently asked to return to their jobs. Across both the U.S. and the U.K., the figure was 16%.
And among the returnees, 51% wanted a substantial pay increase before agreeing to return, SHL found. Additionally, 42% said they would require written guarantees about future job security, and 40% wanted transparency about how AI would be used in their positions.
Companies are finding out AI can’t do everything
Similarly, a Robert Half survey from July found that 32% of U.S. hiring managers whose organizations eliminated positions because of AI later had to reinstate the same or similar roles. Among that group, 40% said the positions required institutional knowledge or context that AI couldn’t replace. Another 39% cited relationship management, 39% pointed to increased business demand, and 38% said the positions required more human oversight and quality control than expected.
And some prominent companies have already encountered those limitations. Swedish buy-now, pay-later company Klarna began recruiting human customer service representatives after relying heavily on AI chatbots. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski acknowledged the company had gone too far in its reliance on automation, according to Bloomberg.
A Klarna spokesperson told Fortune human agents were needed “for complex, sensitive cases.” The company began directly hiring a “small number” of high-skilled humans into the customer service process to identify where the “human touch” can bring most value to customers.
Ford also hired and promoted 350 experienced engineers in June after AI-powered quality control tools failed to perform as expected. The automaker said AI had contributed to quality improvements but emphasized the importance of combining the tech with experienced engineering teams.
“These engineers carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design,” a Ford representative previously told Fortune. The company said AI is very important to quality gains, “and that, in tandem with deep technical expertise, is what’s needed.”
AI layoffs have been looming, but jobs are growing
Despite the rise of AI rebounding, the number of companies that cited AI as a reason for workforce reductions has grown substantially.
According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, employers cited AI in 121,401 announced job cuts through October, more than double the 54,836 announced layoff plans for all of 2025.
And younger workers are especially vulnerable to AI-led job displacement. A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study found that employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in occupations highly exposed to AI was 19% below where it would have been if it had grown at the same pace as employment among their less-exposed peers.
SHL’s research shows some promise for the younger workers, however. The firm found that younger workers were more likely to report experiencing the “AI rebounding.” Among respondents aged 18 to 24, 24% said they had personally been replaced by AI and later asked to return, compared to 19.1% of U.S. respondents overall.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com