As companies tout “efficiency,” tech and finance workers face mounting job cuts tied to aggressive AI investment
Corporate America is booking higher profits while quietly erasing thousands of white-collar jobs, as artificial intelligence lets banks and Big Tech do more with far fewer people.
According to CNBC, Meta and Microsoft together outlined more than 20,000 potential job cuts on Thursday, months after Amazon announced its most widespread layoffs ever.
Over 92,000 tech workers have already lost their jobs so far in 2026, bringing total tech layoffs to almost 900,000 since 2020, as per figures cited by the outlet.
Economists and industry experts told CNBC this marks “a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction,” and “the beginning of a permanent transformation in how work gets organized and executed across industries.”
The same firms spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on AI infrastructure are using AI to “seek efficiencies” by shrinking headcount and correcting for pandemic-era overhiring.
Job anxiety jumped after OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, and CNBC reported that Anthropic’s Claude tools have already taken over work once handled by entire business divisions, putting wide swaths of existing software solutions at risk.
A 2026 Motion Recruitment study cited by the same outlet said AI adoption is slowing hiring for entry-level and “generalized IT roles,” while AI jobs are in high demand.
The study found tech salaries remain largely flat versus 2025, except for some specialized roles like AI engineers.
Rajat Bhageria, CEO of physical AI startup Chef Robotics, told the outlet that AI will probably create jobs, but “it’s just less certain what that will look like at the moment.”
He said workers and employers are only starting to understand how much of everyday work AI can take over across a wide range of jobs.
Meta sits at the centre of this shift.
The Financial Times reported that the US$1.7tn social media group will cut 10 percent of its staff next month, or about 8,000 jobs, to “run the company more efficiently and . . . offset the other investments we’re making.”
Meta will also stop hiring for 6,000 planned roles.
CNBC reported that the cuts start May 20 and follow earlier rounds that removed about 10 percent of metaverse-focused staff, including roughly 1,000 Reality Labs employees, plus hundreds more roles across Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations and sales.
According to the Times, Meta is spending billions on AI infrastructure, including a fleet of costly data centres, and is poaching elite talent to catch up with Google and OpenAI.
In January, Meta said its capital expenditure could nearly double to US$135bn this year, which the article noted has fuelled investor anxiety.
Meta has centred its AI strategy on what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “personal superintelligence,” rolling out a new AI model called Muse Spark that it says is “purpose-built” for its products, including the Meta AI chatbot, though it acknowledges the model lags the most advanced rivals.
The company has also announced an AI data centre project dubbed “Meta Compute,” aiming for “tens of gigawatts this decade and hundreds of gigawatts or more,” with each gigawatt costing tens of billions of dollars to build.
Inside the company, that strategy is fuelling unease.
As per the Financial Times, Janelle Gale, Meta’s chief people officer, told staff the May 20 layoffs would come with “a generous severance package,” including 18 months of healthcare coverage for US employees, but admitted the delay leaves “nearly a month of ambiguity which is incredibly unsettling.”
CNBC reported that Meta is also deploying a tracking tool called the Model Capability Initiative to capture keystrokes, mouse clicks and screen content on employee devices so it can train AI agents.
The Financial Times said staff fear they are training models that might eventually replace them.
Other large employers are following suit.
According to CNBC, Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs, largely in its technology department.
Chief Operating Officer Venkatesh Alagirisamy described the reductions as “very hard” on those affected.
Snap will cut 16 percent of its workforce, roughly 1,000 staff, and close at least 300 open positions, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI-driven efficiencies.
Salesforce has laid off 4,000 customer support roles, with CEO Marc Benioff saying, “I need less heads,” as per the outlet.
Oracle said in March it was cutting thousands of employees while ramping up AI spending, and faces pressure over rising debt and dwindling cash flow.
TD Cowen analysts estimated that eliminating 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could add US$8bn to US$10bn in incremental free cash flow for Oracle, as cited by the same outlet.
According to CNBC, Amazon has cut at least 30,000 jobs since October, roughly 10 per cent of its corporate and tech workforce, and has kept trimming staff in smaller waves between big rounds.
Google, by contrast, has opted for smaller but regular cuts since 2023.
Across this landscape, Glassdoor’s Employee Confidence Index shows the tech sector has seen the largest year-over-year confidence drop of any industry, falling 6.8 percentage points in March to 47.2 percent.
Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao told the outlet that fewer people are quitting in an unstable market, which weakens morale and “means even more job cuts,” as companies “are being more aggressive about pushing people out of the door.”
