$ cat tech-layoffs-q1-2026.mdx

96K tech layoffs. Q1 2026 in numbers

May 1, 2026 · #ai #layoffs #tech #meta #microsoft #work #corporate

96K tech layoffs. Q1 2026 in numbers

Ninety-six thousand people in tech lost their jobs in Q1 2026. 872 people daily. Year earlier was three times less. Meta and Microsoft announced layoffs the same day. Stocks of both - rising.

Tech layoffs Q1 2026 job losses

When Meta laid off 11,000 people in 2022, the entire industry talked about “the biggest layoff wave since the dotcom bubble burst”. Everything pointed to a cyclical crisis. No one could then predict that four years later 96,000 layoffs in a single quarter would become the new normal.

Q1 2026 in concrete numbers

Ninety-five thousand eight hundred seventy-eight people (95,878 exactly) in tech lost their jobs in Q1 2026. 249 companies on the list. Average 872 people daily.

For comparison:

  • Q1 2025: ~32,000 layoffs (~3x less)
  • Q1 2024: ~50,000 layoffs
  • Q1 2023: ~90,000 (peak post-COVID)
  • Q1 2022: ~12,000

The trend is simple: 2023 was the “bottom” of the cycle, now we’ve entered a new cycle driven by AI. This isn’t a fluctuation. It’s a structural change.

Biggest cuts of April 2026

Meta announced on April 23 the layoff of 8,000 people (10% of workforce). Sixteen weeks severance + two weeks per year of employment. Start May 20, 2026.

Microsoft the same day - first time in 51 years of existence - proposes voluntary retirement for about 9,000 US employees (7% US workforce). Condition: older employees, close to retirement.

Earlier in 2026:

  • Oracle - 20-30 thousand (continuation of 2025 reductions)
  • Amazon - several thousand across divisions
  • Google - 1,500 in AI research
  • Disney - 2,000 in digital media
  • Snap - 700 in engineering

Kitchen sink list.

Market applauds

Here’s the key detail. When Meta announced layoffs on April 23 - Meta’s shares rose. When Microsoft announced the buyout the same day - Microsoft’s shares rose.

This isn’t an industry crisis. A crisis looks different - shares drop, companies shrink, boards get fired. Here we have the opposite: the market says directly “firing people in the name of AI is profitable”.

The “exchange” mechanism

This isn’t simple “fired and done”. This is an exchange:

  • Laid off: middle layer - finance, HR, legal, support, project managers, operations.
  • Hired: ML researchers, data engineers, AI safety experts, MLOps. At three million dollars per year base salary.

Meta plans to spend $135 billion in 2026 on AI infrastructure and AI talent. Microsoft similarly. Google, Amazon, Anthropic, OpenAI - same pattern.

Effect: same budget spend, but on different people. Fewer heads - more salary per head - higher productivity (so they assume). And higher margins.

What this means for non-US corporate

Non-US tech labor markets are about 18 months behind the US. Meaning: what Meta and Microsoft do today - European corporations will copy by mid-2027 or early 2028.

Who it will hit the hardest:

  • Middle management in tech corporations
  • Shared Services Centers (across Europe and India, where hundreds of thousands of people do remote back-office work for Western companies)
  • Banks and insurance - operations, back-office, support
  • Advertising and marketing agencies - research, copywriting, design
  • Law firms - junior lawyers

My take

In my opinion this is not a passing wave. This is a new corporate structure.

Fewer people, more AI, higher margins. This pattern will stick. The pre-AI state won’t come back. Just like the pre-internet state didn’t come back in 1999 - people used to say “internet is a fad” and “traditional business will return”. It didn’t.

And then the same people post on LinkedIn “we are hiring”. Corporate hypocrisy is fascinating - because it works.

And remember - this isn’t “layoffs”. This is “restructuring for AI”. Sounds nicer.

Sources

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