Small businesses using AI say they can produce more without adding employees, while some report both avoiding hires and losing work to AI. The figures suggest the technology may be reshaping where business spending goes, not simply cutting payroll.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
A PYMNTS Intelligence report found that 60% of small and medium-sized businesses using AI said they could produce more without adding employees. Among businesses reporting growth, 16% said AI had helped them avoid a full-time hire, compared with 10% of businesses with flat revenue.
The report also points to gains and losses in demand: frequent AI users estimated savings equivalent to 16% of annual revenue from avoiding outside help, but estimated losing revenue equivalent to 6.7% as customers used AI instead of buying their services. PYMNTS says 23% of small and medium-sized businesses gained customers seeking human-delivered work, while 14% attracted business correcting AI-generated output. Another 21% emphasised human involvement or planned to do so.
Why it matters
These figures sketch a less tidy story than “AI replaces jobs”. A business may handle more work without another hire, while the supplier it no longer needs loses a sale. At the same time, some firms appear to be finding demand in work where human judgement, correction or accountability is the point.
The figures are estimates reported by PYMNTS Intelligence, not a guarantee that every business will see the same effects. But they give readers concrete outcomes to weigh: fewer hires in some growing firms, less spending on outside help, and new business for people providing human-led or corrective work.
Our read
The headline question is not just how many jobs AI removes. It is also which tasks businesses stop buying, which they can absorb themselves, and where customers still pay for a person to get it right. That is a more useful conversation than treating every efficiency gain as either a miracle or a redundancy notice.
What to watch
- Whether future PYMNTS Intelligence data shows these reported effects growing or narrowing.
- Which kinds of outside work businesses replace with AI, and which still attract customers.
- Whether human-led services and AI correction become lasting sources of new business.
Discussion spark: If AI helps a small business grow without hiring, but also takes revenue from its suppliers, should we call that job creation, job displacement, or a shift in who gets paid?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (27 October 2026, 08:00 UTC)
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