Major Tech Companies Cut Thousands as AI Adoption Accelerates

Tech giants are reshaping their workforces at scale, explicitly linking reductions to AI deployment and operational efficiency gains.

Oracle reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13 percent. The company stated that the adoption and deployment of AI technologies across its operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to its workforce.

Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs on January 28, 2026, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025—about 9 percent of its corporate workforce in three months. CEO Andy Jassy said that as Amazon rolls out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way work is done, and the company will need fewer people doing some of the jobs being done today.

GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14 percent of its staff, on June 3, 2026, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. Despite the cuts, GitLab reported first-quarter revenue of 264 million dollars, up 23 percent year-over-year, and expects to incur 30 to 35 million dollars in restructuring costs.

Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit on February 10, 2026. The company said that because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, the company has seen the number of support cases it handles decline and it no longer needs to actively backfill support engineer roles.

Block cut 4,000 jobs—nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000—on February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey wrote that the intelligence tools Block is creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.

AI Jobs Market Surges Despite Near-Term Cuts

While established tech firms trim headcount, the broader AI jobs market is expanding rapidly, according to PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analysed more than one billion job advertisements in 27 countries and territories.

Jobs requiring specific AI skills are growing almost eight times faster than the total jobs market: 69 percent versus 9 percent. The number of AI jobs is almost twice as high as 2024, with growth in AI jobs outpacing all jobs since 2015.

Workers with AI skills command significant wage premiums. The average wage premium for workers with AI skills hit 62 percent, up from 57 percent the previous year. The wage premium varies substantially by industry: as high as 118 percent in consumer markets, and 16 percent in government and public sector work.

Professionalised roles are seeing twice the growth in available jobs and 42 percent faster salary growth than roles categorised as democratised.

Entry-Level Jobs Increasingly Demand Senior-Level Skills

Entry-level roles most exposed to AI are seven times more likely to require traditionally senior-level skills like leadership, creativity or face-to-face interactions. Job openings for entry-level roles with senior-level skill requirements have grown 35 percent since 2019, while other entry-level roles shrank 10 percent.

Top AI-Exposed Companies Achieve Dramatic Productivity Gains

The top 20 percent of the most AI-exposed companies achieved average labour productivity growth of 163 percent relative to 2018—nearly five times higher than the most AI-exposed companies overall.

Headcount growth at the most AI-exposed companies is 52 percent relative to 36 percent in 2025, based on 2018 baseline levels, compared to the least AI-exposed companies.

Technology, media and telecommunications sectors saw 11 percent share in AI job growth, and professional services sectors saw 6 percent, with health at the lowest end at less than 1 percent.

Source: TechCrunch