Gartner survey: 47% of supply chains cut headcount by an average of 10.5% in two years, mainly because of AI, and entry-level jobs took most of it

Nearly half of supply-chain organisations, 47 percent, reduced headcount by an average of 10.5 percent over the past two years, primarily because of AI, according to a Gartner survey released on 28 October 2026. Two-thirds of the supply-chain leaders surveyed, 66 percent, said the reduction was concentrated at the entry level, more than double the share reporting cuts at any other level. Gartner surveyed 303 supply-chain leaders in North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America between 5 May and 11 June 2026; all worked at organisations that had put AI into their workflows to some degree. "AI is thinning the entry-level supply chain workforce faster than most chief supply chain officers are redesigning the talent pipeline, creating a future capability gap that will actually weaken their organizations' AI performance," said Tess Frenzel, a director analyst in Gartner's supply-chain practice. Gartner's warning is that supply chains have relied on large entry-level intakes to produce their future managers, so a thinner intake leaves fewer people to promote. It says the top quarter of supply chains by AI integration are responding by raising the bar for entry-level roles, asking for more domain and analytics skills and giving junior staff "less repetitive work and more consequential decisions". Gartner is a research and advisory firm that sells to the same supply-chain leaders it surveys. This is a survey of employers' reports, not a count of named cuts, so it does not enter the tracker's total; it is one of the few employer-side datasets that puts a number on AI-linked headcount reduction in a single function.