AI Is Now The Leading Reason Cited For Layoffs—Tech Has Lost 123,000 Jobs This Year
AI Is Now The Leading Reason Cited For Layoffs—Tech Has Lost 123,000 Jobs This Year
Publish Date: 2026-06-04 10:24:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
U.S. employers cut a total of 97,006 jobs in May, the most recent Challenger report found, and the tech sector leads with 38,242 job cuts—the most in a single month for the sector since August 2024.
AI is now the leading reason cited for job cuts—responsible for an estimated 38,579 in May and 87,714 year-to-date—overtaking market and economic conditions, closures and restructuring.
Tech is also the “primary industry” citing AI for job cuts, Challenger said, but it’s also the industry with the most new hiring plans—announcing 11,250 new positions in May.
The tech sector has cut a total of 123,653 jobs since January, up 66% from last year during the same period.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called CEOs who blame AI for layoffs “lazy” and said it doesn’t make sense from a businesses perspective that companies are already utilizing AI to such an extent people are being replaced: “I really hate that,” he said.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince blames artificial intelligence for the decision to cut 20% of its global workforce, or 1,000 people, earlier this month, writing in an op-ed that the company has massively increased AI use in recent months and as a result, not longer needed middle managers, operations experts or parts of its auditing, finance, legal and compliance divisions.
Meta, which will lay off 10% of its workforce Wednesday in a previously announced cut to jobs, tells 7,000 employees they will be reassigned to focus on artificial intelligence initiatives that “will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding,” Janelle Gale, Meta’s head of human resources, said in an internal memo.
Cisco Systems announces it will cut 4,000 jobs and openly admits the layoffs are due to AI adoption at the company.
General Motors lays off between 500 and 600 information technology workers and while the company declined to comment on if AI played a role when asked by CNBC, one unnamed…
