For years and years and years, the plight of the humanities major has been the butt of every family gathering. Who among us hasn’t heard the same old critiques from our equally old relatives: Studying English? Don’t you already speak it? History? Ain’t that already happened?
How are you going to get a job in the “real” world? Haven’t you seen the forecast for future careers? Why don’t you study something like computer science or business administration, something reliable in this ever-developing economy of technology, or at least do something that will make a dollar in this world?
Well, the AI levy has broken and it doesn’t seem to be liberal arts jobs pouring off the market.
In 2025, the watershed year for AI in the workforce, 55,000 layoffs were attributed to it. Almost all of them were from technology companies, and 2026 is already outpacing this rate of cuts.
Amazon laid off 16,000 people from their corporate and tech workforce in the beginning of 2026, adding to 14,000 layoffs from Oct. 2025. The changes coincided with the company investing tens of billions of dollars in AI and supercomputing. Software company Atlassian laid off 1,600 workers in early Mar. 2026 to fund their AI efforts.
Even more staggering is how the market at-large is responding to these changes. After reports that Meta was considering layoffing off 15,000 workers to balance AI spending plans, the company’s stock actually increased.
Block, a financial services tech company, shed half of their entire workforce in February — 4,000 employees — in favor of AI automation work. After slashing its head count, the company’s stock went up as much as 24%.
Tech companies across the country are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI while laying off large sects of their workforce. The next generation of labor will not be about building an army of computer scientists to tame AI, but to what extent large companies can eliminate labor under the veil of “efficiency.”
Take any political science class and you’ll surely be assigned some selections of a 19th century German economic theorist predicting this phenomena.
The jobs you were promised would define the economy for decades to come have been consumed by a monster of their own making. How can you expect to compete with a supercomputer in a coding competition, and how likely are you to get hired for these skills when these platforms are universally available to CEOs already trying to squeeze out more profit?
I graduated from NC State last year with two undergraduate degrees in the humanities. I didn’t plan for my diplomas to immediately land me prosperous career tracks, but it doesn’t mean they wasted my time.
As all humanities professors and academic advisors have been lamenting for decades, studying liberal arts isn’t about learning tangible systematic skills tailored towards specific careers. They’re about developing ideas and the ability to really think.
I know that probably sounds like some silly laissez-faire, head-in-the-clouds liberalism that your high school AP History teacher liked to recite, but its validity has never been more apparent.
I remember walking past these old philosophy department posters in the basement of Caldwell Hall advertising how employable studying Plato and Camus was. The idea is that learning how to think critically or make logical analysis will be applicable to every career on the market. You won’t go immediately into a structured entry-level job with the same title as your major, but you are equipped with the skills to advance and succeed in anything you think is professionally worthwhile.
And yes, the advancements of AI can certainly be seen as a shortcut within humanities studies and employment. But to succumb to this effortlessness is entirely contrary to the core principles of education.
You can produce a perfect essay on the takeaways of Machiavelli’s “The Prince” in seconds, but the lessons won’t register in your mind the same way as spending hours straining over your own comprehension of the term “fortuna” to write a few sentences about it.
You can immediately summarize the meaning of symbolic imagery in “To Kill a Mockingbird” for a class discussion, but it won’t replicate the sensation of truly developing an understanding and opinion to publicly defend against your peers.
In the world of AI’s total efficiency and proficiency, what else can we tout but natural intelligence that can only develop in your brain?
This isn’t to say that AI is the godsend of the job market for humanities majors. You’ll still likely struggle in postgrad life to find your path, but you’ll be more prepared for the world while your freshman roommate is losing their job to a soulless Fortune 500 company that preferred the profits of an unmanned technology to the humanity of a laborer.
If it isn’t already, the job market will soon be completely saturated with minds trained by Instagram reel algorithms and the immediacy of ChatGPT logistics. Having an original thought will be the only possible currency worth showcasing at a job interview, or in life at large. So maybe give that Eastern literature or creative writing elective more of a chance.
