If your employer says AI is doing the work, its own accounts will tell you more than its announcements

Everything in this edition came from documents anyone can open. Here is how.

Go to Companies House and search the company name. It is free and you do not need an account. Open the filing history and filter to accounts.

Find the note headed staff numbers and costs, or sometimes employees. It is usually in the last third of the document. Some companies split their staff into categories, research and administration for example, and some give one total. That choice is the directors' and it tells you something on its own.

Two numbers, and they are not the same thing. The average number employed is a mean across the whole year, so it stays high if people left in the autumn. The number employed at the year end, where a company gives one, is a count on a single day. Mixing an average from one year with a year-end figure from another will produce a change that did not happen.

Divide the wage bill by the number of people. If headcount falls and pay per head holds steady, the cuts landed evenly. If pay per head jumps, the cheaper jobs went first.

One thing to expect. If your employer is owned by a parent registered outside the United Kingdom, the group numbers may simply not be there. That is an ordinary exemption, not a cover-up, and it means the British record can go quiet for years at exactly the companies worth watching.