Microsoft and Meta are laying off tens of thousands of employees. “This is just the beginning”
Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Meta and Amazon alone will spend a total of almost $700 billion this year. for the development of AI infrastructure. The same companies, to meet the growing demand for AI services, seek to increase AI efficiency by reducing employment. They are looking for money for investments, among others: in cutting employee costs.
Meta (Facebook, Instagram) informed employees in a memo on Thursday that it plans to lay off 10 percent. its workforce, which corresponds to approximately 8,000 jobs. The reductions will begin on May 20, “part of our ongoing efforts to run the business more efficiently and enable us to offset other investments.” According to the note, the company also abandons plans to fill 6,000 vacancies. This gives a total of PLN 14,000. potentially fewer jobs on the market.
Around the same time as reports about Meta emerged, Microsoft confirmed it would offer voluntary layoffs, a first for the 51-year-old software giant. According to a person familiar with the plans who asked CNBC to remain anonymous, about 7 percent U.S. workers are eligible for retrenchment. This may mean almost 9 thousand layoffs.
Oracle is also planning thousands of layoffs, Snap wants to reduce its workforce by a thousand, and Salesforce by 4,000. Amazon has already laid off 10% since October. corporate and technological staff, i.e. 30 thousand employees. Google conducts reductions less aggressively, but regularly.
92 thousand IT workers laid off this year
Many economists and industry experts fear that a labor crisis could come today — not in the future — given how quickly artificial intelligence is taking hold of U.S. corporations. According to data from Layoffs.fyi so far over 92 thousand tech sector workers were laid off in 2026 Counting from 2020, this will amount to almost 900,000 in total. people.
“This a fundamental structural change, not a temporary market correction” – Anthony Tuggle, a coach and leadership expert who previously worked on artificial intelligence, told CNBC. “We are witnessing the beginning of a lasting transformation in the way work is organized and carried out in various industries,” he added.
Another mass revolution
Artificial intelligence is theoretically intended to transform human work, not replace it. As in previous waves of massive industrial revolutions, new jobs will be created to meet the needs of the changing economy, and many products and services will become cheaper and more available. “After all, mobile app developers didn't exist in the days before smartphones. And what was the use of IT administrators before servers were created?” – CNBC asks rhetorically.
However, in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), the gap between job loss and job creation appears to be growing. A 2026 Motion Recruitment study found that AI adoption is reducing recruitment for entry-level and “general IT positions,” while AI-related positions are in high demand. The report finds that salaries in the tech industry remain broadly unchanged from 2025, with the exception of some specialist positions such as AI engineers.
Rajat Bhageria, CEO of artificial intelligence startup Chef Robotics, said that while AI will likely create jobs, “it's not certain yet what that will look like.”
“We are only just beginning to understand how many everyday tasks AI can do for us in different types of jobs,” Bhageria said.
