I don't think AI is actively laying people off by replacing entire roles, but I think it is preventing hires that would have happened. In terms of employment figures, this can have a similar effect.

I'm in a small growing tech company and I can say as a matter of fact that in a world without AI we would have made several hires in the past 18 months. Because of LLMs and agents my team doesn't have the need to bring more people in. It's as simple as that.