Oct 23, 2026 · @ https://x.com/myrtlebeachnews
A profitable company is trimming jobs before the robots arrive — and the reasoning behind it doesn’t stop at Wall Street.
American Express told Wall Street analysts on Friday that it will eliminate roughly 5% of its employees worldwide, booking a $336 million restructuring charge to do it [CNBC, 2026]. The company is not in trouble. The same morning, it reported third-quarter net income of $3.7 billion, up from $2.9 billion a year earlier, and raised its full-year profit forecast [American Express SEC filing, 2026]. This Jobpocalypse is indicative of broader trends in the workforce.
So why cut? Chief Financial Officer Christophe Le Caillec gave CNBC a three-part answer: to make the company leaner, more agile and “also to prepare for AI” [CNBC, 2026].
That last phrase is the story. Amex’s major U.S. offices are clustered in places like New York, Arizona, Florida and New Jersey, not here [Built In, 2026], so this isn’t a local plant closing. But it is one of the clearest examples yet of a healthy, growing company reshaping its workforce around artificial intelligence before the technology has actually replaced anyone. For a region whose economy runs on tourism, service work and a growing number of people who earn paychecks from companies headquartered somewhere else, it’s worth understanding how that logic works — and where it’s headed.
The implications of this Jobpocalypse extend beyond American Express and reflect a shifting landscape in employment dynamics.
The headline number is 5%. The actual number of people is less clear, and that matters.
Amex had nearly 77,000 employees at the end of 2025 [CNBC, 2026]. A straight 5% of that works out to about 3,800 jobs, the figure Canadian HR Reporter calculated [Canadian HR Reporter, 2026]. But a company spokesperson told Yahoo Finance the reduction would eliminate 3,500 roles globally [Yahoo Finance, 2026], and other outlets have reported numbers in between. A gap of a few hundred jobs may sound like rounding, but each one is a household.
What Amex has not said is just as important. The company hasn’t publicly identified which departments, locations or job categories will absorb the cuts [YourNews, 2026]. Investors weren’t thrilled either: shares fell about 3% Friday after the announcement [Yahoo Finance, 2026].
The timing tells you this was a choice, not a crisis. Revenue grew 9% for the quarter, and CEO Stephen Squeri said the company is on pace for another year of roughly 10% growth [American Express SEC filing, 2026]. Squeri told analysts that earlier this year he asked senior leaders to hunt down corporate bloat so the company could refocus on its top priorities [Yahoo Finance, 2026]. These cuts are the result of that hunt.
Which raises the obvious question: if the business is booming, what exactly is being cleared out, and why now?
When most people hear “AI layoffs,” they picture a chatbot replacing a customer service rep. That isn’t what Amex executives described.
Le Caillec explained that the plan is to remove layers of management and widen how many people each manager oversees, so the company can automate and use AI over the coming quarters and years [Canadian HR Reporter, 2026]. In plain terms: fewer bosses, each supervising more staff [Protos, 2026]. His reasoning, as he told CNBC, is that there’s no point automating a process that’s badly organized to begin with [CNBC, 2026].
That’s a meaningful shift, and here’s the analysis worth sitting with. Amex isn’t saying AI took these jobs. It’s saying it is reorganizing in advance so that AI can take on more work later. The first people affected aren’t necessarily the ones whose tasks a computer can do today; they’re the layers of coordination and approval that executives believe will be unnecessary once software handles more of the routine.
It also marks a change in tone. Earlier this year, in coverage of the company’s annual shareholder letter, an Amex executive said its use of AI tools wasn’t aimed at significantly reducing headcount, and described the technology as a way to deepen customer relationships [CIO Dive, 2026]. That same letter touted about 11,000 engineers using AI tools and cutting coding time by more than 30% [CIO Dive, 2026]. Months later, the headcount is coming down. Whether that’s a contradiction or an evolution depends on whom you ask, but it’s a reminder that corporate reassurances about AI and jobs come with an expiration date.
On the customer side, Squeri devoted roughly 10 minutes of his prepared remarks to AI, mostly about using it to tailor offers and experiences for cardholders. He also drew a line on outside AI agents, saying Amex won’t let them “run rogue through our system” [Canadian HR Reporter, 2026].
To understand who’s paying for this transformation, follow the money — and it leads straight to the travel business.
Part of what made Friday’s profit numbers look so strong was a one-time windfall: Amex recorded a $982 million pre-tax gain from selling its stake in Global Business Travel Group, the corporate travel company it once ran [American Express SEC filing, 2026]. Le Caillec said part of those proceeds went toward funding the restructuring [CNBC, 2026]. One outlet noted the travel-stake gain more than covered the cost of the layoffs [Protos, 2026].
That’s a striking detail for a beach town. Travel booking has been the front line of tech-driven job loss at Amex for more than a decade. Back in 2013, the company announced 5,400 job cuts, with the deepest reductions in travel, as business travelers increasingly booked and changed flights and hotels themselves on their phones [NPR, 2013].
The pattern continued this year at the travel company Amex has now sold off. In June, American Express GBT announced it would eliminate 116 positions in Spain, moving billing work to India and corporate reservations to Mexico, with the European Union’s restructuring tracker noting AI’s possible effect on reservation work as a factor [Eurofound, 2026].
The Grand Strand lives on travel. Every trip that gets booked, changed or canceled with less human involvement is a small change in how the tourism economy functions. Most of the people who welcome visitors here — the cooks, housekeepers, golf course crews and front desk staff — do work AI can’t do. But the booking, billing and back-office systems behind those visits are exactly where automation is moving fastest.
Amex’s decision doesn’t exist in a vacuum, though. It’s part of a national trend that has been building all year.
Nationally, AI has become the single most common reason employers give for layoffs in 2026. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 120,136 announced job cuts tied to AI through September, about 21% of all cuts this year [Challenger, Gray & Christmas via 4 Corner Resources, 2026]. Amex itself pointed to a peer: earlier this year, payments company Block said it would cut about 4,000 jobs, roughly 40% of its staff, betting AI could handle much of that work [CIO Dive, 2026].
But the full picture is more complicated than the headlines. Total announced layoffs through September were actually down 39% from the same period in 2025 [Challenger, Gray & Christmas via 4 Corner Resources, 2026]. Andy Challenger himself said earlier this year that AI isn’t yet “the jobpocalypse some predicted” [Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 2026], and Apollo Global Management’s chief economist has argued he sees no evidence AI is driving job losses in national payroll data [Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 2026]. Research firm Gartner has gone further, predicting that half of companies that cut staff because of AI will rehire for similar work under new job titles by 2027 [Canadian HR Reporter, 2026].
In other words, some “AI layoffs” may really be ordinary cost-cutting with a fashionable label. Readers should treat the phrase with the same skepticism they’d bring to any corporate press release.
At home, the numbers look steadier. Horry County’s unemployment rate was 4.7% in June 2026, down from 7.0% in January as the tourist season ramped up [S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce, 2026]. One analysis of AI exposure rates Horry County at 50 out of 100, slightly below South Carolina’s 53, largely because our top industries — accommodation and food service, health care and construction — rely on hands-on work [AIExposure.org, 2026].
That same analysis lists administrative and support services and real estate among the county’s largest sectors [AIExposure.org, 2026], and those are the kinds of desk jobs where AI tools are already being tested. The local takeaway isn’t panic. It’s that the risk here is concentrated in offices, not kitchens — including the home offices of anyone in Horry or Georgetown County who works remotely for a national bank, insurer or card company.
Several things are worth watching in the coming months.
First, whether Amex discloses where the cuts land. The company has yet to say which teams or locations are affected [YourNews, 2026], and the gap between “about 3,500” and “about 3,800” jobs deserves a clearer answer.
Second, whether other card issuers and banks follow the same playbook: flatten management now, automate later. Amex’s executives framed this as a move made from a position of strength [Canadian HR Reporter, 2026], which makes it easier for competitors to justify similar cuts without any financial pressure at all.
Third, the data. Challenger’s October layoff report will show whether AI-attributed cuts are accelerating or leveling off, and the state’s monthly workforce reports will show whether the Grand Strand’s job market holds up after the summer crowds leave.
For local workers, the practical advice is the same as it’s always been, just more urgent. Learn the tools that are reshaping your field instead of waiting for them to reshape your job. Horry-Georgetown Technical College offers more than 80 degree, diploma and certificate programs [Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp., 2026], a good place to start for anyone looking to add skills.
Amex says it’s preparing for AI. The rest of us should be, too — with clear eyes about what’s real, what’s hype, and who gets to decide which jobs are “layers.”
Jobpocalypse – American Express is cutting 5% of its workforce to ‘prepare for AI’ — CNBC
Jobpocalypse – American Express Q3 2026 earnings release (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1) — SEC
Jobpocalypse – Amex to cut 5 per cent of workforce ‘to prepare for AI’ — Canadian HR Reporter
Jobpocalypse – Stock market today: American Express shares fall after workforce reduction — Yahoo Finance
Jobpocalypse – AmEx fires 5% of workers, raises profit forecast just 1% — Protos
Jobpocalypse – American Express to Cut 3,500 Jobs as Company Restructures Workforce for AI — YourNews
Jobpocalypse – How Amex is using new AI tools — CIO Dive
Jobpocalypse – American Express GBT, Outsourcing in Spain — Eurofound European Restructuring Monitor
AmEx Travel Section Bears the Brunt of Layoffs (2013) — NPR
September 2026 Challenger job cuts analysis — 4 Corner Resources
Challenger: AI Isn’t a ‘Jobpocalypse,’ but Still Leads Layoffs
Horry County AI exposure profile — AIExposure.org
South Carolina Data Trends: June 2026 — S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce
Horry County Workforce — Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp.
