I feel like everyone is trying to correlate everything to chatgpt launching and not the fact that 2023-2024 we were starting to feel the pain of coming out of a 4 year lock down. Like there are much bigger economical factors than “well chatgpt launch ig we dont need consultants anymore”
itchybumbum on
What will we do if c-suite can no longer pay to get advice from 25 year olds who stick buzzwords in powerpoints?!?!
TophatOwl_ on
I feel like everyone is trying to correlate everything to chatgpt launching and not the fact that 2023-2024 we were starting to feel the pain of coming out of a 4 year lock down. Like there are much bigger economical factors than “well chatgpt launch ig we dont need consultants anymore”
Cero_Kurn on
when clients realize that consulting its mainly chatgpt they will stop paying millions to consulting firms and do it themselves
ScottyOnWheels on
I have a few thoughts / speculation in addition to the AI impact.
-The global economic climate became really “interesting” because of Trump’s Tariffs. It had a chilling effect on all but high profile M&A.
-ChatGPT and AI as tech have an impact. However, I think they are greatly overshadowed by the investment engine behind AI.
-“Post-COVID” normalization continues. Revenue growth rated remain unattainable, but optimizing for profit is more viable.
chartr on
A particular congratulations to the all the consultants in the chat who noticed the Y-axis break point (the discontinuity) is in the wrong place. Apologies – believe it or not this was made a by a human who made a mistake and I am sorry, guess AI will take my job now.
Professional-Cry8310 on
I think people in these comments are overlooking the “scientific and technology” part of that statement. Management consulting is often a load of shit and it’s where the “PowerPoint deck job” memes come from, but consulting as a whole encompasses a whole lot more than that. I’m very happy with the highly skilled consultants we had that implemented our most recent ERP for example, we did not have the in house skills at all to do it ourselves. I imagine that sort of work falls under consulting but wasn’t just a PowerPoint busy job.
I have no idea what AI’s effect on that sort of work is though. I wonder how “automated” you could really make an implementation project like that.
AxelNotRose on
Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. This is way too simplistic to come up with any definitive conclusion.
vanderlinden on
I’m aware of people paying 6-figures for Airtable consulting. Just yesterday I used Gemini to set up something fairly complex.
Dogrel on
In other news, warehouses are always looking for manual laborers, so those unwanted consultants don’t need to stay unemployed if they don’t want to.
kaeptnphlop on
Are you sure it’s not because the federal reserve raised interest rates between April ’22 and April ’23 by 5 points from 0.08% to 5.33%?
Spending was reeled back drastically. Thousands of people were laid of that were “overhired” during COVID and so on.
sunnyjuicedrink on
The number of consultants here struck me as surprisingly high. Management consulting is a small employer and nowhere near the 1M+ shown.
I went to the NAICS website to see what’s included.
First, PE firms are included (surprise to me) as they provide investment advice. This is important because the companies owned by PE are counted in their employment, and those are not consultants.
Second, outsourcing staffing firms are included. While this is technically contract labor, it’s very different than having an outside team of consultants. And it’s a lot of people.
Last, Big 4 accounting is included. While they are also consultants, many employees do legally required audit.
All to say, there’s a lot more going on in the economy than ChatGPT replacing McKinsey.
datingoverthirty on
I think when we look back in 10 years, we’ll see this was more due to the ambiguity and uncertainty wrought by tariffs and a crooked “deal-making” sense of political governance that’s made it impossible to forecast talent needs and build cogent workforce strategies…
It’s not the neat AI tech that can predict patterns and create weird images — it’s the inability to plan for tomorrow as fascists run the show
cdupree1 on
A major component of this data set that isn’t addressed is the fact that this coincides with DOGE efforts and federal contract scrutiny that left a major dent in public sector consulting the industry.
Despite the title and context, there are certainly other factors at play and the timing is convenient.
terroristhater2001 on
not sure if i hate AI or fake email jobs that make the value of my house every year more
scummos on
I mean in the “Software publishing & Data services” you can very clearly see at least part of the effect isn’t causally related to the ChatGPT launch, because the downturn happens *before* the launch…
earthwormjimwow on
> Tools: Excel
Aww, I was hoping you had used ChatGPT…
hydrOHxide on
At least for people who think studying a topic is a waste of time because ChatGPT can answer every question. Good luck with your grant application using 60% purely made-up citations….
almostDynamic on
This just shows the whole economy is stagnant.
uniyk on
Consulting employs more people than finance sounds about right, but more than silicon valley? How could it? Does this plot include those lobbying type of consultancy?
NotYourScratchMonkey on
In my experience (some of it anyways), companies hire consultants so that they can blame the consultant for an unpopular change or if something doesn’t work as well as it was supposed to.
You do (presumably) get the expertise around what you are trying to do and probably most companies go into the relationship with the sincere desire to hire someone to help them with change.
But when they hire McKinsey to come in and evaluate your staffing and how many people need to be laid off, the company already has a good idea of that number (and probably who). They just want to have an outside “expert” validate the decision to let go of people plus they can say they are only doing what the consultants said to do.
In other words, consultants aren’t always hired because of expertise in a specific topic. They are often used as political cover.
stylepolice on
How long will it take executives (that hire consultants…) to realize all those GenAI-Bots give shitty advice if you have no experts to actually prompt them and sanitize the output?
![The release of ChatGPT may have almost perfectly top-ticked consulting employment in the United States [OC]](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/zg58zdrztd5g1-1536x1529.png "The release of ChatGPT may have almost perfectly top-ticked consulting employment in the United States [OC]")
31 Comments
Now you, too, can create a 130 slide powerpoint deck that says nothing at all, just like a high-powered McKinsey analyst!
Weird that the lines stayed smooth through the break in the y axis
How is there a discontinuity in the y axis but the curves seem continuous across the discontinuity? Unless I’m reading the mark below 0.4% wrong.
But if we get rid of consultants, who will outsource the work to offshore coder farms and claim credit for it?
None of these industries were impacted by thr 2007 crash?
There are a lot of jobs that I worry about, but if the big consultancies all disappeared, I feel like that’s overall a win for humanity.
If you trust the data, what else happened around the same time that might explain the change? Correlation is not causation. DOGE, perhaps?
Only 1% of workers are consultants? I would have honestly guessed it was closer to 5-10%.
https://preview.redd.it/fi3wej1vxd5g1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f6ee9e8b2d679b5181b60b01133cfb5842389e77
I feel like everyone is trying to correlate everything to chatgpt launching and not the fact that 2023-2024 we were starting to feel the pain of coming out of a 4 year lock down. Like there are much bigger economical factors than “well chatgpt launch ig we dont need consultants anymore”
What will we do if c-suite can no longer pay to get advice from 25 year olds who stick buzzwords in powerpoints?!?!
I feel like everyone is trying to correlate everything to chatgpt launching and not the fact that 2023-2024 we were starting to feel the pain of coming out of a 4 year lock down. Like there are much bigger economical factors than “well chatgpt launch ig we dont need consultants anymore”
when clients realize that consulting its mainly chatgpt they will stop paying millions to consulting firms and do it themselves
I have a few thoughts / speculation in addition to the AI impact.
-The global economic climate became really “interesting” because of Trump’s Tariffs. It had a chilling effect on all but high profile M&A.
-ChatGPT and AI as tech have an impact. However, I think they are greatly overshadowed by the investment engine behind AI.
-“Post-COVID” normalization continues. Revenue growth rated remain unattainable, but optimizing for profit is more viable.
A particular congratulations to the all the consultants in the chat who noticed the Y-axis break point (the discontinuity) is in the wrong place. Apologies – believe it or not this was made a by a human who made a mistake and I am sorry, guess AI will take my job now.
I think people in these comments are overlooking the “scientific and technology” part of that statement. Management consulting is often a load of shit and it’s where the “PowerPoint deck job” memes come from, but consulting as a whole encompasses a whole lot more than that. I’m very happy with the highly skilled consultants we had that implemented our most recent ERP for example, we did not have the in house skills at all to do it ourselves. I imagine that sort of work falls under consulting but wasn’t just a PowerPoint busy job.
I have no idea what AI’s effect on that sort of work is though. I wonder how “automated” you could really make an implementation project like that.
Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. This is way too simplistic to come up with any definitive conclusion.
I’m aware of people paying 6-figures for Airtable consulting. Just yesterday I used Gemini to set up something fairly complex.
In other news, warehouses are always looking for manual laborers, so those unwanted consultants don’t need to stay unemployed if they don’t want to.
Are you sure it’s not because the federal reserve raised interest rates between April ’22 and April ’23 by 5 points from 0.08% to 5.33%?
See: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/fedfunds
Spending was reeled back drastically. Thousands of people were laid of that were “overhired” during COVID and so on.
The number of consultants here struck me as surprisingly high. Management consulting is a small employer and nowhere near the 1M+ shown.
I went to the NAICS website to see what’s included.
First, PE firms are included (surprise to me) as they provide investment advice. This is important because the companies owned by PE are counted in their employment, and those are not consultants.
Second, outsourcing staffing firms are included. While this is technically contract labor, it’s very different than having an outside team of consultants. And it’s a lot of people.
Third, there are some public agencies here ([MDOT](https://www.naics.com/company-profile-page/?co=266)?). No idea why but they’re not consultants per se.
Last, Big 4 accounting is included. While they are also consultants, many employees do legally required audit.
All to say, there’s a lot more going on in the economy than ChatGPT replacing McKinsey.
I think when we look back in 10 years, we’ll see this was more due to the ambiguity and uncertainty wrought by tariffs and a crooked “deal-making” sense of political governance that’s made it impossible to forecast talent needs and build cogent workforce strategies…
It’s not the neat AI tech that can predict patterns and create weird images — it’s the inability to plan for tomorrow as fascists run the show
A major component of this data set that isn’t addressed is the fact that this coincides with DOGE efforts and federal contract scrutiny that left a major dent in public sector consulting the industry.
Despite the title and context, there are certainly other factors at play and the timing is convenient.
not sure if i hate AI or fake email jobs that make the value of my house every year more
I mean in the “Software publishing & Data services” you can very clearly see at least part of the effect isn’t causally related to the ChatGPT launch, because the downturn happens *before* the launch…
> Tools: Excel
Aww, I was hoping you had used ChatGPT…
At least for people who think studying a topic is a waste of time because ChatGPT can answer every question. Good luck with your grant application using 60% purely made-up citations….
This just shows the whole economy is stagnant.
Consulting employs more people than finance sounds about right, but more than silicon valley? How could it? Does this plot include those lobbying type of consultancy?
In my experience (some of it anyways), companies hire consultants so that they can blame the consultant for an unpopular change or if something doesn’t work as well as it was supposed to.
You do (presumably) get the expertise around what you are trying to do and probably most companies go into the relationship with the sincere desire to hire someone to help them with change.
But when they hire McKinsey to come in and evaluate your staffing and how many people need to be laid off, the company already has a good idea of that number (and probably who). They just want to have an outside “expert” validate the decision to let go of people plus they can say they are only doing what the consultants said to do.
In other words, consultants aren’t always hired because of expertise in a specific topic. They are often used as political cover.
How long will it take executives (that hire consultants…) to realize all those GenAI-Bots give shitty advice if you have no experts to actually prompt them and sanitize the output?