It’s merely five months of 2026 and more than 92,000 tech workers have already lost their jobs this year. April turned out to be the worst month for tech layoffs in the last two years, with more than 45,000 employees being affected. Meta, Snap, Microsoft, Oracle, Block, Amazon, Nike, and GoPro are some of the biggest tech companies that announced layoffs this year, citing AI-driven efficiencies and over-hiring done during the Covid period, and the industry hasn’t seen since the post-pandemic reckoning of 2022 and 2023.ALSO READ: Elon Musk endorses Warren Buffett’s five-minute plan to fix US debt
8,000 job cuts at Meta and voluntary retirements at MicrosoftFacebook’s parent company Meta announced the hardest move. On April 22, the company told its employees that 8,000 of them- around 10 percent of the global workforce- will have to leave the firm on May 20. The company has vowed $135 billion in capital expenditure for its latest AI push. Another 6,000 open roles would simply stay unfilled.
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Another tech company joining the list was Snap, the parent company of Snapchat. The tech firm said it would eliminate around 1,000 jobs, which is around 16 percent of its full-time workforce and leave another 300 roles permanently unfilled. CEO Evan Spiegel has stated that the AI technology now generates more than 65 percent of the Snap code, allowing the company to operate with smaller, more focused teams. The company is targeting over $500 million in annualized savings by the second half of the year.
Microsoft took a slightly different approach. The US tech giant opened a voluntary exit route for thousands of long-serving employees in the US, marking the first retirement buyout programme in the company’s 50-year history. The programme could affect nearly 8,750 employees, or around 7 per cent of Microsoft’s US workforce. The programme targets employees whose combined age and years of service total at least 70, positioning the move as a structured workforce transition rather than another round of compulsory layoffs.30,000 jobs gone at Amazon and Oracle drown in AI debtJeff Bezos’ Amazon has carried out massive layoffs in phases and has laid off nearly 30,000 corporate jobs within about six months. The company first eliminated around 14,000 roles in October, followed by another 16,000 in January and described the move as an effort to reduce bureaucracy.
Oracle sent an email on March 31, 2026, to its terminated employee and faced severe backlash for the move. Oracle started laying off employees across its global offices, with workers in US, India, Canada reporting termination emails landing in their inboxes as early as 6AM EST. The company has also been under pressure as heavy spending on AI infrastructure, including data centres and computing capacity, has yet to deliver expected returns. Analysts have additionally raised concerns over the company’s growing AI-related debt, making workforce reductions a financial necessity rather than a strategic choice.
Meanwhile, Block, Inc. announced one of the sharpest cuts, with CEO Jack Dorsey revealing plans to reduce nearly 40% of the workforce, affecting more than 4,000 employees. “We’re not making this decision because we’re in trouble,” Dorsey wrote in a message that drew widespread attention for its unusually direct tone.
According to a CNBC report, industry executives believe artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming workplace structures and business operations. Tools such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are increasingly showing how entire workflows and functions can be automated. “We’re witnessing the beginning of a permanent transformation in how work gets organized and executed across industries,” said Anthony Tuggle.Job anxiety increasingAccording to the CNBC report, the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index showed a sharp decline in confidence among tech sector employees, falling 6.8 percentage points year-on-year to 47.2% in March. The report also noted that fewer employees are leaving jobs voluntarily due to concerns over market uncertainty and job instability, a trend that has allowed companies to adopt more aggressive approaches toward layoffs and stricter performance evaluations.
“Because natural attrition isn’t happening as much, companies are being more aggressive about pushing people out of the door,” Glassdoor’s chief economist Daniel Zhao told CNBC.
Big companies continue to invest in AIDespite the tech layoffs, big tech companies like Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft are collectively expected to spend $674 billion on capital expenditures this year. The amount is more than double what the same group spent just two years ago, when AI spending was already considered aggressive. Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion combined in 2026 to meet soaring demand for AI services.