Ai, in Italia market at 1.8 billion and rapidly growing demand for skills. And in Europe?

However, the problem of mismatch remains. In 2023, Eurostat reported that about 60 per cent of Italian companies had difficulty finding ICT professionals, while only 8 per cent of students followed training courses in the sector, the lowest figure in the European Union. In this context, the Anitec-Assinform report emphasises that Ai, by enabling the automation of certain programming phases, can help relieve pressure on the labour market.

As for the impact on employment, the report indicates that for the time being in Italia we do not see examples of total replacement of the workforce, 'but rather a reorganisation of roles and an increasing hybridisation between technical and operational skills'.

However, there are two noteworthy cases. The first concerns InvestCloud Italy, a subsidiary of an American fintech group based in Veneto, which has dismissed all 37 employees at its Marghera office, citing an organisational model based on Ai that 'does not provide for the maintenance of autonomous local structures'. The company has decided to focus on a few global centres of excellence, with a strategy focused on 'replicable and scalable' innovation. It is one of the first cases in Italia where Ai is mentioned as a key factor in a staff reduction.

The second example concerns a graphic designer dismissed by a cybersecurity company. The company, after introducing Ai tools to reorganise workflows, dismissed the employee. In this case, the Court of Rome, in a landmark ruling, considered the dismissal for objective justification legitimate, stating that artificial intelligence was one of the tools through which the company was able to make its structure more efficient. In this decision, Ai was not elevated to an autonomous legal cause, but made its way into jurisprudence and set a precedent.

If we broaden our gaze beyond Italian borders, similar dynamics emerge in part but with different accents across European countries. In Spain, for example, the French consultancy Capgemini initiated a collective redundancy procedure in April 2026 as part of a restructuring plan linked to rapid technological change and an uncertain economic environment. The company explicitly mentioned the need to adapt also to the impact of artificial intelligence and the evolution of customer demand.

However, the actual role of Ai in these decisions remains a matter of debate. The Spanish trade union CCOO has challenged the corporate narrative, arguing that the cuts are rather the result of questionable strategic choices. The case is part of a broader context: already in January, Capgemini itself had announced a workforce adjustment plan in France with possible 2,400 redundancies. At the same time, the three main global technology consultancy companies - Accenture, Capgemini and Infosys - lost a total of more than $100 billion in capitalisation in 2025, a sign of a phase of profound transformation in the sector.

In Austria, however, a marked gap emerges between public perception and data reality. According to various surveys, 51 per cent of the population fears that Ai destroys more jobs than it creates, but the concrete effects so far are limited. On the contrary, the IT sector has seen employment growth of 3.4 per cent by 2025, with more than half of the companies increasing their staff.

This does not mean that the impact is zero. Large groups like Amazon have also announced cuts related to the adoption of Ai, while companies like Accenture are redefining their organisational models. According to Michael Zettel, managing director of Accenture Austria, the process has three phases: retraining of the existing workforce, induction of new specialists and gradual elimination of roles that are not compatible with the era of artificial intelligence. Demand is increasingly moving towards 'hybrid' profiles, capable of combining technical skills and automated process management.

This transformation coexists with a severe skills shortage: by 2030 there could be a shortage of some 39,000 IT professionals in the country. At the same time, companies such as Dynatrace continue to hire hundreds of people every year, signalling how Ai is raising the standards required rather than reducing employment in a linear fashion.

An even different situation can be observed in the Czech Republic, where the IT sector accounts for around 4 per cent of total employment, with over 200,000 workers and a strongly integrated ecosystem with Western multinationals. Here the topic of Ai-related redundancies is much discussed, but concrete figures remain limited. Some companies, such as Oracle, have announced significant staff reductions, but this is not yet a phenomenon that will affect macroeconomic indicators.

According to sources within the sector, artificial intelligence is sometimes used as a justification for cuts that actually respond to cyclical IT market logics or the need to reduce costs after the expansion phase of the pandemic period. What is more evident, however, is a slowdown in recruitment, an increase in the skills required and stagnating wages. In the background, long-term forecasts indicate the possible disappearance of around 250,000 jobs by 2050, but these estimates are still far removed from the current effects.

Finally, in Romania, the impact of Ai is more direct and already visible. The IT sector accounts for around 6 per cent of GDP and employs almost 200,000 people, but after years of expansion there is a contraction in employment, with thousands of jobs lost in the last two years. In particular, there is a significant decline in entry-level positions: junior programmers see fewer opportunities, while jobs are increasingly being taken up by senior profiles supported by artificial intelligence tools.

According to the employers' association Anis and the industry unions, Ai is contributing to a profound reorganisation of labour: on the one hand it increases efficiency and reduces costs, on the other hand it concentrates employment on high value-added roles, such as supervision and control. This phenomenon is exacerbated by external factors, including reduced tax incentives for the sector and falling demand from Western Europe.

Particularly relevant is the fact that the Romanian economic model, based on outsourcing activities and repetitive services, is more exposed to technological substitution. In this context, artificial intelligence is not only a support tool, but is indicated as a key factor in the replacement of entire job functions, with effects that are set to intensify in the coming years.

*This article is part of the European collaborative journalism project "Pulse"