Treat your 2027 entry-level hires as their own budget line and not part of overall headcount. The best current payroll data shows that employment in AI-exposed jobs is shifting, with fewer junior hires rather than layoffs. Most marketing budget discussions are looking somewhere else.

In July, I argued that chief marketing officers should fund five functions instead of legacy channel buckets. In September, I argued that SEO and paid media managers become directors by proving AI pays for itself while keeping their teams intact. Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen, and Kevin Indig’s October planning memo, support parts of both arguments.

They also expose a gap.

What Stanford Measured, And What It Can’t Tell You

The Stanford Digital Economy Lab working paper , revised Aug. 12, 2026, draws on anonymized ADP payroll records.…