New research from JLL, developed in partnership with MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Center for Real Estate, finds that U.S. markets most exposed to AI-driven job displacement are simultaneously seeing some of the strongest office demand from AI companies. The work highlights how artificial intelligence is creating a clear split across markets, industries, and asset classes, emphasizing which locations and sectors are positioned to adapt and which are more vulnerable.
JLL’s report, titled ‘Where AI is Changing Jobs and What it Means for Real Estate,’ notes that overall U.S. tech employment declined by 1.5% in early 2026. Despite that pullback in tech headcount, office leasing demand from the sector is described as continuing to rebound. The findings indicate a decoupling between AI-led growth and broader trends in traditional tech and other office-using industries, underscoring how AI activity can drive leasing trajectories that differ from the rest of the tech ecosystem.
San Francisco illustrates this dynamic. Since 2025, nearly 30% of total office leasing activity in the city has been attributed to AI companies, even as the market ranks among those with the highest exposure to AI-driven job dislocation risk in the United States. According to the research, exposure alone does not determine real estate performance; instead, the critical factor is whether a local economy can redirect and redeploy its workforce as AI reshapes roles and functions.
JLL concludes that a market’s capacity to adapt and capture new AI-related opportunities is central to future office performance. The analysis stresses the importance of an ecosystem that can evolve, rather than one that simply hosts AI-adjacent industries without the ability to absorb structural change in employment patterns.
Alexandra Bryant, global CEO of Value & Risk Advisory at JLL, explains that successful real estate strategies will focus less on headline concerns about job losses and more on a market’s adaptability. She points to the need for the right combination of talent, infrastructure, and quality space to translate AI exposure into sustained demand. In that framing, AI becomes not only a source of potential disruption, but also a differentiator between markets that can align their workforce and real estate stock with emerging requirements and those that cannot.
