Staffing company Adecco says AI impact on jobs limited so far

By John Revill

ZURICH (Reuters) -Adecco has so far seen only a limited impact from artificial intelligence technology on the jobs market, Chief Executive Denis Machuel said on Thursday, as the staffing company reported better-than-expected third-quarter results.

Concerns are mounting that AI is rapidly displacing human workers – with the trend evident in recent corporate layoffs such as the 14,000 job cuts recently announced by Amazon.

However, Adecco, which provides temporary and permanent staff to industries ranging from banking to logistics, has seen some layoffs at its client companies attributed to AI, but it was not a "massive wave," Machuel said.

"We haven't seen yet a revolution. I would say the impact on the labour market is still early stage," Machuel told reporters.

"We see some impact but if I look at the layoffs, some are more related to other arbitration, productivity improvement, not necessarily related to AI," he added.

He was speaking after Adecco reported a 1% rise in third-quarter sales to 5.78 billion euros ($6.74 billion) in the three months to the end of September, slightly ahead of analyst forecasts.

When adjusted for trading days and currency moves, the company's revenue increased by 3.4% from a year ago, and was 3% higher than in the second quarter.

Based on early indications, Adecco expects its sales to grow by the same 3% quarterly rate in its final quarter of 2025.

Third quarter net income fell 10% to 89 million euros, compared with a forecast drop to 70 million euros.

The company's shares surged by 9.5% in early trading, with analysts at Bank Vontobel saying the results were well above expectations.

The company's business providing temporary staff was improving, Machuel said, although permanent recruitment remained sluggish.

"There's still uncertainty, and when there's uncertainty, you hesitate to recruit permanently," Machuel said.

However, growth in flexible and temporary hiring showed "the economy is not that bad," he said.

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

(Reporting by John Revill, Editing by Friederike Heine, Janane Venkatraman and Tomasz Janowski)