The world of work is going through a major shift because of artificial intelligence, and businesses are reporting big challenges for their employees. A recent survey by EY talked to 15,000 workers across 29 countries, and the results show something surprising. More than 6 out of 10 employees (64%) say their workload has gotten bigger in the last 12 months. This is a huge number that shows workers everywhere are feeling more pressure at their jobs.

What makes this even more interesting is that AI is not actually creating more work directly, according to Kim Billeter, who is a leader at EY. Instead, workers are stressed out because they are worried and scared about what AI will do to their jobs. Employees fear they might lose important skills, or they might not understand how to use new technology. This mix of worry, fear, and not knowing what will happen is making workers feel stressed and tired. Many companies are telling employees to learn new skills while they still do their regular jobs, and this is a big problem because it is really hard.

Job losses are growing rapidly, and AI is playing a role. In Maryland, United States, layoffs increased by almost 30%, which means thousands of people lost their jobs. According to a report called the Challenger Report from October 2025, AI is now one of the top 10 reasons companies give for cutting jobs, along with saving money and economic problems. When looking at the whole United States, there have been over one million layoffs so far in 2025, which is the highest number at this time of year since the pandemic and the Great Recession happened. In October alone, AI was the second most common reason companies gave for laying off workers, right after just trying to save money.

Young people are having a particularly hard time. Recent college graduates are struggling to find jobs right now, with 9.3% of recent grads unemployed, which is the highest it has been outside of the pandemic since 2014. But the real warning comes from U.S. Senator Mark Warner, who says unemployment for new college graduates could reach as high as 25% in the next two to three years. This would cause serious problems for society because these young people have student loans but no jobs to pay them back. Experts worry about the impact on the next generation of workers who were already facing challenges before AI.

Lower-income workers are already facing the impact of AI at their jobs right now. Research shows that these workers, who earn less money, make up more than 20% of all workers exposed to AI. These workers typically do office and administrative jobs and work in industries like healthcare and social services. This means AI is affecting regular workers and not just fancy tech jobs. Many of these workers are older and more educated than other lower-income workers, but they are still worried about their jobs.

Where someone physically works seems to make a big difference in using AI tools. A study from Stanford researchers discovered something shocking: only 16% of people who work in an office all day use AI tools like ChatGPT, but 32% of people who work from home use these tools, and 39% of people who work sometimes at home and sometimes in the office use them. This is a really big difference - people working from home are more than twice as likely to use AI. The reason might be that people working from home feel like they need AI more to do their jobs, or they feel less judged when using new technology. For companies that spent huge amounts of money on AI, this gap between office workers and remote workers is very concerning.

However, the real problem is that most workers are not very skilled at using AI yet. An EY survey found that while 88% of workers use AI at their jobs, most of them only use basic features like search or document summarizing. These simple uses save a few hours here and there but do not really change how work gets done. Only 5% of workers qualify as advanced users who really understand how to use AI as a thinking partner to help them solve problems. This means companies are missing out on 40% of the productivity improvements they could get from AI because workers are not trained well enough. The real solution is not just buying more AI technology - it is training people properly and building strong human teams along with the technology.