AI Could Cut Labor Costs by Up to 94% for These Roles, New Data Reveals

An April 2026 report on job automation costs found that replacing DevOps engineers with AI can save companies 94% annually. Following the recent layoffs at Amazon and Meta, a new job market breakdown by Entrepreneur and Founder Yaroslav Kyrychenko reveals where it actually makes sense to replace workers with AI.

• Companies can save $146K yearly by replacing DevOps engineers with AI, cutting their annual costs from $156K down to just $9K.

• Data scientists are 94% more expensive than AI agents doing the same work, costing businesses nearly $150K more per year.

• Brand strategists earn $157K per year, but AI can do the same work for $11K, making it one of the easiest roles to automate.

The research calculated the true annual cost of employing a human worker versus using an AI agent across 55 different jobs. The report combined salary, health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave, and onboarding expenses to get the full cost of keeping someone on payroll. For AI replacements, the study tracked subscription fees for tools like ChatGPT and Claude, API token costs, cloud infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance. Each profession was ranked by how much money companies save when switching from human workers to AI agents.

Here's a look at the top 10 jobs where AI replacements make the most financial sense:

Profession	Annual Mean Wage ($)	Human Worker Total Costs ($)	AI Agent Total Costs ($)	Annual Savings ($)	Savings (%)
DevOps Engineer	122.4K	155.9K	9.4K	146.5K	94.00%
Data Scientist	123.0K	156.4K	9.6K	147.0K	93.90%
Brand Strategist	123.0K	156.6K	10.2K	146.3K	93.40%
Technical Writer	102.4K	132.6K	8.8K	123.8K	93.40%
Software Developer	131.4K	166.5K	11.1K	155.3K	93.30%
Podcast Producer	88.5K	116.4K	7.9K	108.5K	93.20%
Curriculum Designer	87.6K	115.4K	8.1K	107.3K	93.00%
Online Tutor	82.6K	109.5K	7.8K	101.8K	92.90%
Financial Planner	92.4K	120.9K	8.7K	112.2K	92.80%
Data Analyst	85.1K	112.4K	8.6K	103.8K	92.30%

You can access the complete research findings here.

1. DevOps Engineer

• Annual mean wage: $122.4K

• Human worker total costs: $155.9K

• AI agent total costs: $9,358

• Annual savings: $146.5K

• Savings percentage: 94%

Replacing DevOps engineers with AI makes the most financial sense. Hiring one engineer costs around $156K per year once you add salary, health insurance, and retirement benefits. At the same time, AI tools that do the same work cost just $9.4K annually for subscriptions and cloud storage. That's a $147K difference, or about 94% savings. GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT can now handle most of the coding that DevOps engineers normally do, which is why the return on cost is so high here.

2. Data Scientist

Data scientists are nearly as cheap to automate, potentially saving companies $147K each year. These professionals earn $123K annually, but keeping them on staff costs companies $157K when health insurance, paid time off, and other benefits are added up. This actually makes data scientists one of the most expensive hires. However, AI tools that do the same work cost 94% less. This $9.6K covers Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions, plus API charges that vary with dataset size. 

3. Brand Strategist

Brand strategists cost $157K annually to keep on payroll, but only $123K of that is actual salary. The other $34K goes to benefits like health insurance at $8,400 yearly, plus retirement matching and paid time off. At the same time, companies need just a few AI subscriptions to cover everything a brand strategist does: Midjourney to create visuals, Jasper for copywriting, and ChatGPT for strategy planning. Even with all these tools, the annual cost stays under $11K. Compared to the human costs, companies can save 93% this way.

4. Technical Writer

Technical writers are also cheap to replace with AI. A human technical writer costs $133K after you add their $102K salary to benefits and hiring costs. AI does the job for $8.8K, mostly spent on ChatGPT and Grammarly subscriptions. Automation isn’t hard either, as once the AI learns the company's writing style, it needs minimal supervision. Most technical writing follows templates and style guides, so if companies decide to delegate these tasks to AI, they can easily save 93% in documentation expenses. 

5. Software Developer

Replacing software developers with AI can potentially lead to the biggest savings at $155K per year. Hiring an experienced developer in-house costs up to $167K, including salaries and all the benefits. On the other hand, AI might be able to do the same work for $11.2K, using GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT. The downside is upkeep: AI-written code requires nearly $4K in annual maintenance, meaning senior developers must check for mistakes. Even so, the 93% cost reduction might make sense for many companies since junior developers spend most of their day writing repetitive code.

Yaroslav Kyrychenko, Entrepreneur & Founder, concludes:

"Cybersecurity analysts came out as the least automatable role in tech. The savings are still there, but nowhere near the 94% you get with DevOps engineers. Money isn't even the main concern, though. If AI-generated code has a bug, a developer fixes it in an hour. If AI misses a hacking attempt, your company loses millions in stolen data before anyone notices. The stakes are completely different."