“We didn't refill the position.”
This sentence could become the code word for one of the biggest changes in our labour market.
An employee resigns.
Retires.
Moves to another company.
In the past, the position was advertised again.
Today, something else can happen:
The work stays.
But the next person never arrives.
Because AI takes over part of the tasks.
AI doesn't fire people.
It prevents their successors.
botjobs analyses real job ads and assesses to what extent the tasks described in them can already be carried out by AI agents today.
These are not forecasts.
These are job ads, advertised today.
These numbers do not come from a study about the year 2035.
They are based on jobs for which companies are looking for people today.
“We didn't refill the position.”
Sounds harmless.
Sounds like staff turnover.
Sounds like cost optimisation.
Doesn't sound like job loss.
But that is exactly what it can be.
A person leaves their job.
Nobody is dismissed.
There is no headline.
No wave of layoffs.
No protests.
The position simply disappears.
The tasks are still there.
They are just done differently. For example:
“We don't need a new employee.
We have Claude now.”
Of course a Claude, ChatGPT or other AI subscription does not automatically replace a complete employee. But when AI takes over enough of a position's tasks, exactly that can turn into a business decision: the position is not refilled.
Job loss does not always look like job loss.
- Yesterday
Anna works in marketing.
40 hours a week.
- Then
Anna leaves the company.
- In the past
A job ad is published.
A new employee is sought.
- Today
Copy → AI
Research → AI
Analyses → AI
Presentations → AI
Reporting → AI
Email drafts → AI
- Decision
“We won't refill the position for now.”
Anna was not fired by AI.
And yet her job may no longer exist.
We are looking for AI layoffs.
Maybe we are looking for the wrong signal.
When 5,000 people lose their jobs at the same time, it is news.
When 5,000 companies each leave one position unfilled, possibly the same thing happens.
Just without the news.
Jobs can disappear without anyone being dismissed.
That is why watching layoff statistics alone is not enough.
We also have to watch which human tasks technically still require a human at all.
AI doesn't take your profession.
It starts with your tasks.
The public debate often asks the wrong question:
“Can AI replace a lawyer?”
“Can AI replace an accountant?”
“Can AI replace a marketing manager?”
The more interesting question is:
Which of these people's tasks can AI take over?
Because companies don't buy job titles.
They pay people to get tasks done.
If out of ten tasks first three are automated, then five, then seven, at some point it is not just the job that changes.
The number of people needed changes.
But maybe it no longer needs:
10 people.
But 7.
Then 5.
Then 3.
Automation doesn't have to wipe out a profession.
It is enough if it halves the headcount.
What happens when AI takes over the beginners' work first?
Many tasks AI handles particularly well used to be classic entry-level tasks:
Research.
Summaries.
First drafts.
Documentation.
Data preparation.
Standard correspondence.
Translations.
Presentations.
That raises a bigger question:
If nobody does the junior work any more:
where will the seniors come from?
Does this mean millions of people will be unemployed tomorrow?
No.
botjobs does not claim that every agent-capable job will disappear.
Nor does a high score automatically mean that a person can be fully replaced.
People bring abilities that cannot be calculated from a job ad:
Responsibility.
Experience.
Relationships.
Judgement.
Empathy.
Creativity.
Leadership.
Trust.
But:
When technology can take over a relevant part of a job, its economics change.
And that is exactly the change we want to make visible.
You don't have to be afraid of AI.
But you should know what it can do.
The biggest risk may not be being replaced tomorrow.
The bigger risk is believing for five years that your profession is not changing.
Use botjobs to see:
- which tasks are becoming automatable
- which skills are becoming more valuable
- which activities remain human
- how your profession is developing
And what about your job?
The debate about AI stays abstract as long as it only ever concerns “the others”.
What do you do for a living?
You will see real jobs advertised today that match your work — each with a score and one sentence of reasoning. The job ads are in German.
If AI takes over 50% of your tasks tomorrow:
will your employer still need just as many people?
Progress doesn’t ask for permission.
Our position, on one page: against no technology, but against a future in which we sleepwalk into becoming economically expendable.
This is the writing on the wall. The jobs in it are real.
botjobs is not a job board. It is the writing on the wall, written in today's job ads: “weighed and found wanting”, and here every single ad is weighed. Every ad listed here is advertised today, by a real company, with the task profile it wrote itself. That is exactly what makes it uncomfortable.
What is real, and what is staged
The jobs, the assessments, the numbers
- The jobs. Every listed ad is actually advertised at the time it is shown, with the task profile the employer wrote. Nothing recreated, nothing invented.
- The assessment. A language model checks every job: how much of the described core tasks an AI agent could already do today. A score from 0 to 100 with one sentence of reasoning next to it. A machine's verdict on human work, readable and disputable.
- The figures. Jobs analysed, jobs listed, the sum of advertised annual salaries: all calculated from the current stock, traceable at /api/stats.
The form in which this appears
- The role of the portal. A job board that lists jobs for AI agents, with a live counter and an interface through which machines fetch the list themselves. It acts as if this state were already normal.
- It is not yet. But the gap is smaller than it feels, and it can be measured here — with your own occupation in the search field.
- One number is calculated, not measured: the curve of the last twelve months under the AI rate. Assessment only started in August 2026; there are no measured values before that. This is also stated under the chart itself.
Provocative questions need solid data.
Our results are meant to spark debate. That is why it has to be clear how they come about.
We analyse real, currently advertised job ads. A language model assesses the core tasks described in the ad by the extent to which modern AI agents can technically carry them out. A second stage checks whether an agent could carry the role at all.
Important: the score assesses the tasks described in a job ad. It does not assess:
- the worth of a human being
- the entire actual work of an employee
- individual abilities
- social relationships
- company culture
- personal responsibility beyond the ad
A high score therefore means: high technical automation potential of the advertised tasks — and not: “this person is X percent replaceable.”
Numbers for a debate that is only just beginning.
Journalists, researchers and institutions may use the aggregated data from botjobs. It is open and machine-readable:
- GET /api/stats — key figures and index
- GET /api/jobs — all listed jobs with score and reasoning
- GET /api/jobs/{id} — a single job
- /llms.txt — description for agents
Press contact: hello@botjobs.org
Maybe you will never be fired because of AI.
Maybe your successor will simply never be hired.
“We didn't refill the position.”