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AI is reducing youth hiring in France, while SME adoption remains a minority

A study by the Banque de France, HEC Paris and INSEAD documents a decline in permanent hiring of young people at French companies that make intensive use of AI, echoing comparable data from Anthropic and abroad. AI adoption among SMEs is growing but remains a minority in France, Spain and OECD countries, well behind large companies. Several studies also point to a loss of control over AI agents and still limited value creation, while large companies, including Barclays, announce job cuts linked to automation.

Key developments

  1. Companies that use AI intensively hire fewer young people on permanent contracts

    A paper by researchers at HEC Paris, the Banque de France and INSEAD shows that in France, companies reporting intensive use of generative AI (around 600 of the 6,000 surveyed) hired 17 to 25% fewer 21-29-year-olds on permanent contracts in 2025 than other companies in their industry, with no difference in total headcount. Over one year, this would represent around 75,000 fewer permanent contracts for this age group. At Anthropic, the share of juniors in technical hires fell from 27% to 9% between early 2025 and June 2026. Comparable studies are cited in Denmark and the United States.

    Sources: ActuIA, Xataka

  2. AI adoption among SMEs is growing but remains a minority

    In France, a field report from the Hérault département describes micro-businesses and SMEs still feeling their way with AI, held back by a lack of in-house skills. In Spain, the National Statistics Institute reports that 33.6% of companies with ten or more employees used AI in the first quarter of 2026, but a BBVA study puts the share of Spanish SMEs using it at only 5%. According to an Amazon report based on OECD data, AI adoption among SMEs in member countries rose from 7% in 2023 to over 17% in 2025, but the gap with large companies widened, from 23 to 35 points.

    Sources: La Tribune, Europa Press (1, 2), El Ecosistema Startup

  3. IT departments report losing control over AI agents

    According to a Datadog report based on a survey of 750 IT decision-makers in France, the United Kingdom and Germany, 48% of French managers consider AI governance to be outpaced by the speed of adoption, and 42% cannot detect an anomaly before it affects a customer; 35% of French companies already run autonomous agents in production. Microsoft is extending its monitoring tools for at-risk employees to AI agents, treating them like insider threats. Walmart, by contrast, is opening its systems to external shopping agents, with customer-set spending caps, whereas Amazon blocks them.

    Sources: GoodTech (ex-Toolinux), ActuIA (1, 2), BFM Business

  4. Value creation from AI is still slow to materialise

    According to an MIT study cited in an opinion piece in Journal du Net, 95% of enterprise generative AI pilot projects have no measurable impact on results, despite tens of billions invested. In finance departments, OneStream's Forward Finance Index, based on a survey of 1,300 chief financial officers in France, the United States and the United Kingdom, shows that 74% see a reduction in manual tasks but only 14% believe AI creates company-wide value. Among IT services companies and technology consultancies, the Grand Angle study by KPMG and Numeum finds that AI still accounts for only 7% of revenue, against a target of 18% within three years.

    Sources: Journal du Net, DAF Magazine, Silicon.fr

  5. AI-related job cuts are multiplying at large companies

    A Reuters tally dated 22 October lists more than 30 large companies that have announced job cuts this year while redirecting investment towards AI, including HSBC (up to 20,000 jobs), Amazon (16,000) and Standard Chartered (7,000). Barclays announced the elimination of 5,000 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, around 60% of them in support functions such as software development, in connection with the efficiency gains made possible by AI.

    Sources: Infobae, Cinco Días

Figures of the week

  • 75,000 permanent contracts

    Missing permanent hires over one year for 21-29-year-olds, compared with the November 2022 level

    France, 21-29-year-olds, most exposed occupations, over one year to March 2026

    « « Sur un an, cela représente environ 75 000 CDI de moins pour les seuls 21-29 ans », écrit la note. »

    ActuIA , from Note LIFT 2026-02, HEC Paris, Banque de France, INSEAD

  • 17 %

    AI adoption rate among SMEs in OECD countries in 2025

    SMEs, OECD countries, 2025

    « la adopción de la IA entre las pymes de los países de la OCDE ha pasado del 7% en 2023 a más del 17% en 2025 »

    Europa Press , from OCDE / rapport Amazon 'Impulsando a las pymes europeas con Inteligencia Artificial (IA)'

  • 33.6 %

    share of Spanish companies with 10 or more employees that used AI in the first quarter of 2026

    Spain, companies with 10 or more employees, Q1 2026, sample of ~15,000 companies

    « El 33,6% de las empresas de diez o más empleados en España utilizó la inteligencia artificial (IA) en el primer trimestre de 2026, lo que supone un incremento de 12,5 puntos porcentuales en comparación con el mismo periodo de 2025. »

    Europa Press , from Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Encuesta sobre el uso de las TIC y el comercio electrónico en las empresas

  • 95 %

    share of enterprise generative AI pilot projects with no measurable impact on results

    enterprise generative AI pilot projects, study published summer 2025

    « Selon une étude du MIT publiée à l'été 2025, 95 % des projets pilotes d'IA générative en entreprise restent sans impact mesurable sur les résultats, malgré des dizaines de milliards investis. »

    Journal du Net , from MIT

  • 30 companies

    Number of large companies that announced layoffs linked to the redirection of investment towards AI in 2026

    Worldwide (United States, Europe, Australia, Brazil), 2026, according to a Reuters tally updated on 22 October

    « Más de 30 grandes empresas de sectores tan distintos como la banca, el comercio minorista y la tecnología anunciaron despidos este año mientras redirigen inversión hacia la inteligencia artificial, según un relevamiento de la agencia Reuters actualizado el 22 de octubre. »

    Infobae , from Reuters

  • 5,000 jobs

    Job cuts at Barclays linked to AI and other technologies

    Barclays, total workforce of 93,000 employees

    « Barclays ha anunciado esta mañana un recorte de 5.000 empleos, lo que supondrá reducir la plantilla en aproximadamente un 5%, sobre un total de 93.000 trabajadores. »

    Expansión

In France and Spain

France

Several announcements illustrate French companies' pursuit of sovereignty: OVHcloud presented an in-house LLM, trained internally and released as open source, focused on cybersecurity, code and agentic AI, and Crédit Agricole chose Mistral to build its AI platform, within a budget of almost €500 million over 2026-2028. In SMEs, the France Num directory lists concrete uses of AI agents (construction site schedules, responses to tenders, management dashboards), while an executive at Yakadata warns of the risk of "shadow AI" arising from the use of free tools without oversight by managers. A guide published this week details the AI Act obligations applicable in 2026.

Sources: Alliancy, ActuIA, France Num (1, 2), Archimag, Brief IA

Spain

The Spanish banking industry has made a series of announcements: Banco Santander signed a three-year agreement with Nvidia to deploy AI across the bank, targeting €1,000 million in gains over two years, after a 50% reduction in customer service costs during the pilot phase; Banco Sabadell has partnered with T-Systems, and BBVA and Santander are working with Nvidia on agent security. CaixaBank has deployed its app in ChatGPT. According to a KPMG study, 78% of Spanish banking companies make cybersecurity an investment priority in the face of AI-related risks, compared with 39% of all Spanish employers.

Sources: Cinco Días (1, 2), Computing, elEconomista, Expansión

Internationally

United States

Uber has rolled out ChatGPT Work to all 30,000 of its employees, following a pilot in which 80% of the first users were not engineers. Walmart is opening its systems to external shopping agents, with customer-set spending caps, unlike Amazon, which blocks some of these agents. According to a Wharton Human-AI Research survey of 1,415 executives and employees, 77% of companies use AI agents but only 28% consider them fully integrated into their processes, and 37% report AI-related headcount reductions. An Apollo economist estimates that AI has brought "no financial gain" to the US economy outside the technology industry. Several major banks, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, are starting to restrict external AI agents' access to their customers' accounts.

Sources: TechCrunch (1, 2), Brief IA, ActuIA, Xataka (1, 2), ZDNet France

China

On 19 October, China's Ministry of Commerce published a notice applying to commerce AI agents (shopping guides, logistics) the "tiered" governance defined in May 2026 by the Cyberspace Administration for all intelligent agents, without specifying which regime will apply to each use: registration and testing for sensitive areas, simple self-assessment for low-risk uses. The same ministry also proposed, on 16 October, subjecting 23 AI-related technologies, including intelligent agents, to export controls, out of 40 technologies targeted in total.

Sources: ActuIA

Rest of the world

In Germany, the government signed a letter of intent with Nvidia to deploy AI in factories, with the aim of raising Siemens' automation rate from 30-40% to 70-80%. In Latin America, the Índice Latinoamericano de Inteligencia Artificial (Cepal and Cenia) measures an average company adoption rate of 9.1%, against 27.6% for large companies and 6.8% for small ones, with Uruguay leading at 16.5%. In Canada, the firm Explorai estimates that AI adoption could save Quebec construction SMEs 10% of labour costs in the first year.

Sources: ZDNet France, El Economista (México), La Presse

What's changing

Over the previous four weeks (28 September to 18 October), the share of articles devoted to large companies is rising: 36% this week, against 26 to 31% previously. The share devoted to SMEs, by contrast, is falling, to 17%, against 19 to 34% over the same period, its lowest level of the five weeks. The banking, insurance and asset management industry accounts for 21% of articles, against 13 to 17% in the previous four weeks. The share of announcements rises to 35%, after 18 to 24% previously, at the expense of data-driven studies, which fall to 16% after levels of 19 to 32%.

Comparison with the previous 4 weeks

Method

Digest written on 26 October 2026 by an AI model (Claude Sonnet 5, by Anthropic) from the 215 articles published in the AI watch for 19 – 25 October 2026. Each paragraph links to the entries it draws on, and every number in the text was found in one of those articles before publication. The figures of the week are given with the exact sentence from the article that provides them. Digest translated from French by Claude Sonnet 5.5.

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