Nicholas Bennett has managed to stay one step ahead of artificial intelligence, until now.
For almost three decades, he translated Japanese and French books, market research and other materials into English before the technology advanced so much that the work dried up.
In 2024, he found a job on a data annotation team at outsourcing company Covalen, whose workers moderate content and train AI models on behalf of its major client, social media giant Meta Platforms Inc. Two years on, he’s out of a job again.
Covalen has said that it’s cutting around 700 roles. Bennett, 61, is among them. Those cuts coincide with job cuts at Meta, as it reorients around AI. The company is culling about 20% of its Irish workforce, double the planned global average at the company.
Adding in previous reductions, headcount at the Dublin offices of the Facebook and Instagram owner is half what it was five years ago, according to local estimates. TikTok is also considering cutting about 300 staff and a restructure impacting its AI data service and operations team among others.
Meta declined to comment. Covalen is consulting with affected teams, a spokesperson said. TikTok has said some at-risk staff will be offered other positions and the restructuring would lead to new jobs.
The announcements came just months after the government said that the country would be among the first to face widespread AI-driven labor market disruption and as it sees declines in its high tech employment rates. It’s bad news for any economy, but more so for Ireland, whose success is built in large part on investment from overseas companies.
More than 6% of the workforce is employed in the tech sector, higher than the European Union average, and Ireland is heavily exposed to US multinationals, many of whom are culling jobs as they invest in AI processes.
“There are so many layoffs now on an almost daily basis apparently caused by AI,” Bennett said. “The big problem is what society is going to do with all these unemployed people. That’s a massive issue.”
There are signs that AI is impacting early-stage hiring. Employment in ICT among the under 30s dropped by almost one third between 2023 and 2025, a government analysis shows. In the first quarter of 2026, overall jobs in the sector fell almost 11% year-on-year.
Concerns about how AI will transform work are on the rise everywhere as vast sums are pumped into the technology. Bloomberg Economics estimates that 27% of workers in advanced economies are likely to be meaningfully affected by AI. The figure for Ireland is 30%.
What Bloomberg Economics Says…
“Between the late 1970s and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the share of US workers employed in manufacturing fell from above 20% to 10%, a wrenching transition in which automation played a significant role. For good or ill, the impact of AI could be bigger.”
— Ana Andrade. Click here to read more.
It’s a particular worry for college students, many of whom were counting on having a choice of well-paid jobs. Ireland has the highest share of science, tech, engineering and math graduates per capita in the EU.
“Stability has definitely gone down,” said Alex Judge, a 22-year-old American studying computer science at Trinity College Dublin. “But I’m faithful if you can work hard and keep applying yourself you will still be hirable.”
He plans to return to the US after graduation, but among his fellow students looking for work in Ireland, there’s a “general vibe of ‘this kind of sucks’,” he said.
Ireland’s dependence on US firms has been building over decades, part of a transactional arrangement that saw businesses benefit from lower tax rates and an English-speaking location in Europe, while the country got investment and jobs.
But they may reduce their footprint in the longer term and artificial intelligence puts highly paid — and highly taxed — roles at risk, potentially hitting the country’s finances, according to an analysis by Ireland’s budget watchdog.
“If labour income declines and capital income increases following AI adoption, Ireland’s overall tax base will narrow significantly,” researchers wrote in an April 2026 paper cited by the watchdog. If the country supports employees in gaining AI-adjacent skills, however, it could also benefit from the boom, they wrote.
Overall, the labor market overall still looks solid. Unemployment is below the euro-area average, and some tech firms are hiring. Anthropic and OpenAI have postings on LinkedIn for core engineering jobs, after Bloomberg previously reported they were expanding their Dublin offices.
AI marketing company Klaviyo Inc. is growing as it looks for more than 50,000 square feet of office space. Ireland is an “increasingly important” location, said Carmel Galvin, its chief people officer.
Colin Hunt, chief executive of AIB Group Plc, expects more job cuts, but says that Ireland’s longstanding reputation as a reliable location for multinational firms won’t easily be undone.
“We are going through a period clearly of labor market loosening in the tech sector,” he said. “The impact is being felt. But will Ireland remain a key hub for tech in Europe? Yes.”
The government, meanwhile, is trying to stay ahead of any seismic shift. It’s hosting a summit in October as part of its plan to showcase Ireland as a hub for AI development. It’s invited Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, people familiar with the plans said, along with several other C-suite leaders.
Mike Beary, former head of Amazon Web Services in Ireland, said the country has generally done well to create higher-quality tech jobs but may not keep pace with other hubs such as the UK.
“The question becomes — can we swim up the stack one more time and say we’ve got the tech skills, flexibility and innovation to meet the next wave?’’ said Beary, who is now chair of the Governing Authority at University College Dublin. “At the moment, frankly, we’re losing out to London for the most transformational AI roles.”That’s leaving workers including Bennett exposed to an increasingly competitive market. He’s found a few months of freelance work, light editing on books that have already been machine-translated. Beyond that, he’s trying to find another role that will match his skills.
“The irony is,” he said, is that “I’ve been using AI to update my LinkedIn, CV, and cover letter because recruiters use AI to screen CVs.”
–With assistance from Jennifer Duggan.
Fletcher writes for Bloomberg.
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