Gartner predicts 30% of workers replaced by AI will be rehired by 2029

Replacing employees with AI may leave companies paying more to bring them back. Gartner predicts that 30% of workers terminated and replaced by AI will be rehired by 2029, typically at greater cost. The forecast, detailed by ITPro, puts workforce planning—not simply the capability of AI tools—at the center of that reversal.

Gartner’s diagnosis is that employers are making decisions in the wrong order. Caitlyn McDonough, a vice president analyst in its HR practice, said companies often settle on how many people to dismiss before understanding what delivering the work will require. The firm links its projected rehiring to that failure to align staffing decisions with business needs.

Only 19% of firms said they have practices to help leaders understand changes in work, assess AI’s impact and align talent strategies with business goals. That finding concerns employers’ planning practices; the 2029 rehiring figure is a forecast, not a count of workers who have already returned.

“They decide how many people to let go before they understand what it will take to get work done.”

Caitlyn McDonough, vice president analyst, Gartner HR practice

Returning workers may demand different terms

Worker research offers one reason a reversal could become expensive. SHL’s Talent Mobility at Work in 2026 surveyed more than 2,000 adults in the United States and United Kingdom. Among AI-replaced workers, 51% said they would want a substantial pay increase before returning, according to Human Resources Director’s account of the findings.

Pay was not the only condition. Some 42% wanted specific guarantees about future job security, while 40% wanted full transparency about AI’s future use in their role. These responses describe what workers would seek before coming back, rather than the terms employers have actually agreed to pay or provide.

Employer-side findings also point to reversals. A Careerminds study found that 32.7% of organizations conducting AI-led layoffs had rehired between a quarter and half of the roles they initially cut. Another 35.6% had rehired more than half. Those figures concern the share of eliminated roles restored within surveyed organizations, not the share of displaced employees returning to their former jobs.

Plan the work before cutting the workforce

Gartner’s proposed response is a strategy-first planning framework. Rather than starting with current jobs, skills and headcount, then asking what AI could change, it recommends identifying the work required to meet business goals. Decisions about people and technology follow that assessment. The framework sets out five phases:

1. Identify the workforce capabilities most important to carrying out the business strategy, establishing which abilities the organization needs to achieve its goals.
2. Forecast future demand for work and the capacity required to deliver it, rather than relying only on today’s staffing picture.
3. Assess future workforce supply, including both people and AI-enabled capacity, so the plan accounts for what each can contribute.
4. Measure the gaps between requirements and available capacity, then evaluate possible solutions according to their cost, risk and speed.
5. Establish governance processes to decide which workforce investments take priority and how those investments will be funded.

The forecast of work demand is a key part of that process, Gartner says. It should establish what work will be performed in the future, how much there will be, and which share will fall to people or AI. That makes the planning question more specific than whether an existing job title appears suitable for automation.