December 17, 2025

AI Drives Layoffs at Global Consulting Giants

Labor cuts are spreading across major consulting firms worldwide. U.S. firms McKinsey & Company and Accenture are cutting thousands to tens of thousands of employees, primarily in administrative departments. Some analysts suggest that advances in artificial intelligence could replace roughly 30% of the work currently performed by consultants, including basic research and data collection. As a result, firms are curbing hiring while racing to upgrade their service models.

Why Consulting Firms Are Cutting Staff

Consulting firms are under increasing pressure to cut costs and restructure their operations as generative AI rapidly replaces tasks once handled by junior consultants and support staff.

US-based OpenAI has introduced a “deep research” function for its conversational AI, ChatGPT, that automatically gathers information from the internet, analyzes specified topics, and compiles structured reports. As generative AI becomes more capable of independently collecting and organizing information, consulting firms are growing increasingly concerned about the sustainability of traditional business models built on labor-intensive research processes.

Bloomberg reported on December 15 that McKinsey will cut thousands of employees, primarily from administrative departments, amounting to roughly 10% of its global workforce. The firm’s headcount peaked at about 45,000 in 2022 but has since fallen to around 40,000 following successive rounds of layoffs.

Other major European and American consulting companies are also reducing staff. Accenture, headquartered in Ireland, announced in September that it would cut 11,000 jobs. PwC, the UK-based professional services firm, said it would cut 1,500 jobs at its US subsidiary and that, by the end of June, it had eliminated 5,600 positions over the past year. The company also revised its previous plan to hire around 100,000 people worldwide by 2030.

While none of these companies have publicly stated that AI adoption is the sole reason for the staff reductions, the rapid evolution of generative AI is clearly forcing consulting firms that provide knowledge-based services to rethink how they deliver value to corporate clients.

Professor Anand Rao of the Heinz School of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University predicts that in the consulting industry, approximately 20 to 25% of tasks traditionally performed by humans, such as simple research, will be replaced by automated systems.

The recent wave of layoffs is also partly the result of overhiring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020, consulting firms dramatically expanded their workforces to meet surging demand for digital transformation services. According to US employment statistics, the number of employees in consulting services is expected to reach about 2.2 million in 2024, representing a 20% increase compared with 2020.

At the same time, advances in AI are generating new types of customer needs. As clients become more proficient in using AI tools themselves, consulting firms are shifting their focus toward cultivating highly skilled professionals who can integrate AI into complex business strategies. Accenture has announced plans to retrain more than 700,000 employees worldwide in 2025 to develop AI-enabled talent, while Deloitte is building its own training programs centered on AI-driven work models and future workplace design.