New research from JLL, developed in partnership with MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Center for Real Estate, indicates that U.S. markets most exposed to AI-driven job displacement are also attracting the strongest real estate demand from AI companies. The findings point to a growing divergence in how different markets, industries, and asset classes are experiencing the impact of artificial intelligence, with performance increasingly tied to adaptability rather than exposure alone.
According to JLL’s “Where AI is Changing Jobs and What it Means for Real Estate” research, overall U.S. tech employment fell by 1.5% in early 2026. Despite this decline, office leasing demand from tech users is described as continuing to rebound, underscoring a disconnect between headline employment numbers and real estate activity. JLL highlights a clear decoupling between the growth of AI-related activity and broader trends in both the wider tech sector and other traditional office-using industries.
San Francisco illustrates this dynamic. Since 2025, nearly 30% of the market’s total leasing volume has been driven by AI companies. At the same time, the city ranks among U.S. markets with the highest exposure to AI-related job dislocation risk. Rather than viewing this exposure as purely negative, JLL’s analysis emphasizes that the real differentiator for real estate performance is a market’s ability to absorb change, create new opportunities, and redeploy affected workers.
Within this framework, markets that pair AI exposure with deep talent pools, strong infrastructure, and a stock of high-quality office space appear better positioned to capture new AI-driven demand. JLL suggests that locations able to align human capital, physical assets, and technology adoption are more likely to benefit from AI expansion, even as certain roles face automation and transformation.
Alexandra Bryant, global CEO of Value & Risk Advisory at JLL, notes that focusing solely on job-loss headlines overlooks how some markets are using AI as a growth catalyst. She states that effective real estate strategies will prioritize a region’s ability to adapt, rather than its exposure to AI in isolation. In her view, AI-related opportunities will accrue to markets that can offer the right blend of talent, infrastructure, and quality real estate that AI firms require as they scale.
For office stakeholders, the research signals that AI adoption is reshaping demand patterns across U.S. markets, often in ways that do not track directly with traditional tech employment metrics. Markets combining high AI exposure with adaptive capacity may continue to record elevated leasing from AI users, while locations with limited ability to pivot their workforce and real estate offerings could lag despite facing similar automation risks.
