The local governments allege that McKinsey created a marketing plan called Project Turbocharge, which involved developing aggressive marketing and sales materials that misrepresented the risk of consuming opioids in higher dosages.
A year-and-a-half ago, management consulting firm McKinsey had just 3,000 AI agents in its possession, with its 40,000 employees far outnumbering its agentic fleet. But in just 18 months, that number has grown more than 500% to about 20,000 AI agents supporting the company's work, CEO Bob Sternfels said on Harvard Business Review's Ideacast. Now, the company is evaluating how well job candidates can work with its AI tool as part of the interview process.
Senior partners at the global management consulting firm, which has been steadily cutting its worldwide workforce over the past few years, are understood to have held initial talks with the heads of non-client-facing departments about shrinking their teams by as much as 10 per cent. A McKinsey spokesman would not confirm how many roles were at risk, but Bloomberg, which first reported the plans, estimated that there could be "a few thousand" layoffs staggered over the next 18 to 24 months.
The company employs some 5,000 to 7,000 workers who aren't partners in North America, and in five years, the number of such employees could rise by 15% to 20%, Eric Kutcher, a senior partner and chair of McKinsey North America, told reporters Monday at the company's media day in New York. For 2026, McKinsey plans to hire 12% more people in North America than in 2025, he said. Kutcher said he expects the company will continue to increase the number of entry-level workers it hires.
