The efficiency era
Output and profits are growing faster than the hours and pay behind them.
Insights/The Human Revenue Report 2026
Revfinery research · First annual edition
Companies are producing more with the same hours of work, and the people who create revenue are feeling it first. This report looks at what the data show about trust, technology, talent, and the changing economics of growth.
Get the report33 pages · PDF · built on federal data and published research
Output and profits are growing faster than the hours and pay behind them.
Trust has become local and conditional, and people are acting accordingly.
Sales feels every pressure first, because pay and performance have always been tied to short-term results.
Companies are adopting AI faster than they are redesigning the work around it.
We are removing some of the places where senior sellers used to be made.
Selling well and leading sellers are different skills.
When another email costs almost nothing, relevance becomes the scarce thing.
A practical framework, plus ten questions to answer before you add headcount, cut it, or automate it.
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Open the PDFPublished October 5, 2026
Twelve numbers from the report, each with the original source it comes from. The full report covers all seven shifts and lists 32 sources.
The labor share of U.S. business output was 52.8% in Q2 2026, the lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began the series in 1947. The figure is preliminary.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2026, RevisedU.S. nonfarm business output was 2.5% higher in Q2 2026 than a year earlier, while hours worked rose 0.2%.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2026, RevisedBLS projects employment in sales and related occupations to fall 1% from 2025 to 2035, while employment overall grows 3%. These are projections, not current counts.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook HandbookEmployers announced 120,136 U.S. job cuts from January through September 2026 with AI as the stated reason, about 21% of all announced cuts. That is the reason employers gave, not proof that AI caused the cut.
Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, job cuts report, October 1, 2026About 2% of firms report AI-related employment decreases in the Census Bureau’s 2026 AI supplement. Its survey of about 1.2 million businesses finds 17% to 20% use AI.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey, May 202614% of AI-using organizations reported AI-driven workforce declines, against the 32% that had expected them.
Source: McKinsey & Company, The state of AI in 202622% of managers worldwide were engaged at work in 2025, down from 31% in 2022.
Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace: 2026 ReportMedian annual SDR attrition was 40% in 2024, in The Bridge Group’s study of 351 B2B companies.
Source: The Bridge Group, Sales Development Models, Metrics & Compensation: 2025 Research ReportThe average seller spends about 40% of their time selling, in Salesforce’s 2026 survey of 4,050 sales professionals.
Source: Salesforce, State of Sales Report 202661% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, and 73% actively avoid suppliers that send irrelevant outreach, in Gartner’s survey of 632 B2B buyers.
Source: Gartner, sales survey press release, June 25, 2025Workers aged 22–25 in the most AI-exposed occupations saw a 13% relative decline in employment since generative AI took off. The occupations studied include software development and customer service, not sales specifically.
Source: Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Canaries in the Coal Mine?, August 2025Since 2021, on-target earnings fell $16,000 for account executives with under one year of tenure and rose $26,000 for those with five or more years.
Source: Xactly, 2026 State of Sales CompensationRevfinery. The Human Revenue Report 2026. October 2026. https://www.revfinery.com/human-revenue-report-2026
You are welcome to quote these findings with a link to this page. When you use a single number, please name its original source as well.
Every number in the report comes from a named source, and the sources are listed at the back with a note on how each was checked. Federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau come first, followed by published research from groups such as Gallup, McKinsey, Gartner, and Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Each statement carries one of three labels, so you can tell research from our own experience and our own predictions.
A first annual report from Revfinery on how trust, technology, talent, and the economics of growth are changing the work of selling. It combines federal statistics and published research with what we see in our own work.
Founders, CEOs, CROs, and sales leaders deciding whether to hire, cut, automate, or outsource sales capacity, along with the sellers and managers working inside those decisions.
Federal sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, and published research from Gallup, McKinsey, Gartner, Edelman, FactSet, and Challenger, Gray & Christmas, among others. All sources are listed in the report.
Yes, the report is free to download.
We plan to publish the report every year. The 2027 edition is planned to add anonymized findings from the Revfinery AI Sales Trainer, our Sales Performance Diagnostic, and client work.
Start with the Sales Performance Diagnostic, or bring us the hiring decision you are weighing.