Article | Creating Resilience

Augmented, not Automated: AI Impact on Jobs in Europe

August 17, 2026 7 Minute Read

By Charles Zhang, Ph.D. Dennis Schoenmaker, Ph.D.

Augmented not Automated AI Impact on Jobs in Europe

Executive Summary

Like every prior technology wave, AI creates new roles and new ways of working as it retires routine ones. AI-skill job postings have climbed in every major economy since ChatGPT was introduced, and job demand is tilting from routine work toward judgment-heavy roles that AI is unlikely to replace.

Because non-routine judgment is what AI cannot yet do, it augments these workers rather than replaces them. Both corporate signalling and workflow data confirm this: AI came up in a workforce context on 58% of S&P 500 earnings calls in Q4 2025, with complement-style language outweighing substitute-style by roughly eight to one (Citadel Securities, 2026). Across 100,000+ GitHub developers, AI-generated initial output surged around seventeen-fold, while final product releases grew by only around 30% because more human judgment is needed at every step between initial output and final release (Demirer et al., 2026).

AI exposure varies widely across European cities, but exposure and adaptability tend to move together, so the most exposed markets are often the best equipped to absorb the disruption. In the most adaptable markets, the UK and France among them, causal evidence shows company formation in AI-exposed industries accelerating after ChatGPT and strengthening over time.

In London, one of Europe’s leading AI markets, AI-exposed occupiers are taking a rising and increasingly dispersed share of new office take-up, with demand diffusing outward from the original cluster core.

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Contacts

Dennis Schoenmaker, Ph.D.

Global Head of Forecasting and Strategic Insight, Head of Data Centre of Excellence

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Charles Zhang, Ph.D.

Senior Analyst, EMEA Forecasting

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Augmented, not Automated: AI Impact on Jobs in Europe

Executive Summary

Creative destruction, again

Complement, not substitute

Exposure alone doesn't predict harm, adaptability does

The signal is already visible in real estate

Continue Reading the Full Report

Contacts

Dennis Schoenmaker, Ph.D.

Charles Zhang, Ph.D.

Related Insights

AI’s Impact on the Economy, Employment & Productivity