Verizon CEO Dan Schulman’s interview with the Wall Street Journal on April 19 delivered the kind of business moment that rarely occurs with this level of openness. The former CEO of PayPal, who took over Verizon in October 2025, told the Journal what most CEOs in the Fortune 100 say in private but refrain from stating in public: artificial intelligence is expected to drive up unemployment in the United States to 20% to 30% in the next two to five years.
The number is impressive in and of itself. Wall Street and Washington are both keeping a careful eye on the readiness to say it publicly—by name, on the face of a major business journal.
| Dan Schulman AI Job Warning — Key Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Person | Dan Schulman |
| Current Role | CEO of Verizon |
| Verizon CEO Start Date | October 2025 |
| Previous Role | CEO of PayPal (until December 2023) |
| Major Public Warning | 20% to 30% unemployment in 2 to 5 years |
| WSJ Interview Date | April 19, 2026 |
| November 2025 Layoffs | About 13,000 employees |
| Career Transition Fund | $20 million |
| AI Human-Level Prediction | By end of 2027 |
| Companion Prediction | Humanoid robots threaten manual labor in 7 years |
| Customer Loss Over 3 Years | About 2.25 million |
| Cost-Cutting Plan | $9 billion |
| Notable Senate Citation | Senator Bernie Sanders |
| Reference Reporting | Wall Street Journal |
| BCG Forecast | Up to 25 million US jobs at risk |
Since the beginning of his time at Verizon, Schulman’s framing has been remarkably straightforward. A $20 million career-transition and retraining fund was established to assist impacted individuals in preparing for the “age of AI” after he fired 13,000 people in November 2025, just weeks after they started working there. Public layoffs combined with a commitment to public retraining were the first indication of the strategy Schulman has been outlining.
The reasoning is straightforward. There will be an interruption soon. It is dishonest to pretend otherwise to employees. “It’s a very difficult time, and everyone knows it is,” Schulman said, adding that businesses that prepare employees honestly will outperform those that pretend the change won’t occur. “So I think being authentic, being realistic, telling the truth, as best you can” .
The aspect of the narrative that makes Schulman’s framing truly unique is the contrast with other tech CEOs’ responses to the same query. In February, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC that “there will be other jobs created” in addition to the replacement of certain positions. The prevailing register of corporate communication on the subject in the majority of public firms has been the optimistic framing: AI creates new prospects while displacing some employment.
Schulman’s departure from that script has garnered significant public support as well as critical attention. In his floor speech, Senator Bernie Sanders mentioned the warning. According to Boston Consulting Group, over half of American occupations could be impacted by AI in the upcoming years, with up to 25 million jobs in the US alone at risk. The BCG estimate plus the current 5% unemployment rate are assumed in the 20–30% headline figure.
If you take the time to look at the data points beneath the prediction, they are quite alarming. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI was responsible for 54,836 job losses in 2025 alone, and it has already been identified as the leading source of 27,645 employment losses in 2026.
According to a Quinnipiac University survey, over 71% of white-collar workers and 73% of blue-collar workers think that job possibilities will certainly drop as a result of AI breakthroughs. The operational reality and public expectations have been catching up more quickly than corporate communication has been willing to admit.
Compared to merely theoretical analysis, Schulman’s framing is more convincing because of the Verizon-specific context. Over the previous three years, the carrier lost almost 2.25 million customers. Postpaid phone churn increased from 0.88% in 2024 to 0.98% in Q4 2025. Under a $9 billion cost-cutting strategy, Schulman is reorganizing the business in an effort to transform Verizon into what he refers to as a “AI-first company.” In his discussions with employees, he has asked them to try out AI tools.
In one well-publicized example, he asked them to write their own obituaries using AI. Clearly, the purpose of the exercise was to encourage staff members to interact directly with the technology. Additionally, it generated the exact headlines one would anticipate from a CEO asking his staff to use a chatbot to investigate mortality.
Observing how everything has transpired over the last two weeks, it seems as though Schulman has reset the limits of what business executives may openly discuss regarding the labor implications of AI. The criticism has also been apparent. The use of AI by Verizon in customer service settings has drawn criticism from certain customers. According to PhoneArena’s coverage, Schulman might wish to moderate the dire portrayal if it starts to negatively impact Verizon’s customer-facing brand.
The question that no honest analyst can confidently answer today is whether Schulman’s forecasts come true—that is, whether AI genuinely causes 20–30% unemployment in the particular timeframe he’s projecting, or whether the labor market reacts in less disastrous ways through the creation of new jobs. One possible result among numerous is represented by the statistics Schulman is quoting.
The more reassuring framework that has dominated business communication on AI over the past three years is no longer credible. The topic of discussion has changed. Which version of the story proves to be the most accurate will be determined over the course of the following few years.