Jason’s claim was that widespread 2023 corporate hiring freezes would be indefinite because it would be easier and cheaper to automate many white‑collar roles with AI than to open and fill new requisitions.

By late 2025, the evidence does not support this:

• U.S. job openings and hires declined but did not freeze. BLS data show openings fell from 10.4 million in January 2023 to 8.9 million in December 2023, with hires and quits continuing throughout the year—i.e., companies kept hiring, just at a cooler pace. (bls.gov)
• Into 2024, job openings declined further to 7.6 million in December, signaling a slowing but still active labor market, not an indefinite freeze. (apnews.com)
• White‑collar hiring specifically is weak enough that some commentators call it a "white‑collar recession," but that still involves ongoing hiring and longer searches, not a standstill. Employers are taking more time and being more selective, not simply automating away all roles. (forbes.com)

On the AI explanation, current research and commentary show AI is one factor among several, not the dominant, immediate reason for corporate hiring restraint:

• Economists and labor‑market analysts emphasize high interest rates and general macroeconomic conditions as primary drivers of reduced white‑collar openings; they explicitly caution that the slowdown so far is “more of an economic story and less of an AI disruption story.” (cnbc.com)
• Studies and forecasts do find substantial future automation potential—Forrester projects generative AI replacing millions of mostly white‑collar jobs by 2030, and Gartner/IPPR estimate a large share of white‑collar tasks could be transformed or replaced. (impactlab.com) But these same analyses note that near‑term, large‑scale job losses are limited by legal, organizational, and reliability constraints.
• Empirical work from Stanford and others shows AI is already reshaping work and disproportionately hitting entry‑level white‑collar roles, but not eliminating broad categories of jobs or ending hiring outright; instead, tasks are being restructured and professionals take on more “AI management” work. (cnbc.com)

Netting this out:

• There is clear ongoing hiring across the economy and within white‑collar sectors in 2023–2025, so hiring freezes were not “indefinite.”
• AI is beginning to substitute for some white‑collar labor and dampen certain junior hiring pipelines, but macroeconomic factors remain the primary, documented cause of the broader hiring slowdown so far.

Because both the permanence (“indefinite freeze”) and the dominant‑cause (“because automating with AI is easier than opening reqs”) parts of the prediction have not materialized as stated, the prediction is best classified as wrong.