The humanist at the top of real estate’s automation machine: ‘I happen to despise the term headcount in the world of AI’

Neil Murray sounds almost disarmingly allergic to the usual corporate AI talk. As head of Real Estate Management Services at JLL, he runs an organization of more than 88,000 people who keep nearly 6 billion square feet of property working every day. Yet he bristles at the language executives often use around automation. “I happen to despise the term ‘headcount’ in the world of AI,” he told Fortune. “I think it sort of dehumanizes what we’re talking about.”

Murray’s core claim is simple: AI won’t shrink his division. He says it will create better jobs, more meaningful jobs, and take over the tasks people never liked doing in the first place. JLL, for its part, declined to share a three-year headcount trend ahead of earnings, saying staffing was “stable” and likely to stay flat or rise only modestly in 2027. The company’s pitch is that stable staffing can still count as progress if productivity goes up. “Stability does not equate to stagnation,” a spokesperson said.

Then comes the awkward part. JLL’s own 2026 Global State of Facilities Management Report, based on a survey of 1,321 organizations across 15 countries, points to a quieter but very real shift away from labor. Eighty-nine percent of respondents said facilities budgets will move from labor toward technology and automation. Even more telling, 87% expect outsourcing contracts to switch to outcome-based pricing by 2030. That matters because it changes the economics. Under outcome-based deals, providers get paid for results, not for staffing hours.

Murray leans on the idea that robotics still has limits, and he is probably right that humanoid robots are not about to diagnose a tricky commercial boiler system. But JLL’s report does not need humanoids to make the point. It says client adoption of robotics is expected to rise from 37% today to 71% by 2030, driven by purpose-built tools such as autonomous scrubbers, robotic lawn care, and remote security systems. Those machines do not replace engineers. They replace other kinds of workers.

Murray also argues that labor shortages will protect the sector. In his view, the trades could even enter a golden age, especially as more people notice the value of skilled work. There is some support for that optimism: 68% of organizations said skilled-trades shortages disrupted operations over the past year, and employers are estimated to need 1.7 million skilled-trades workers annually through 2035. But the report also says only 9% of high school students are actively considering a trade. So yes, JLL’s humanist-in-chief may be sincere. The spreadsheet is less sentimental.