52,000 Tech Workers Lost Their Jobs This Year. AI Was the Leading Reason.
Tech layoffs hit their worst point since 2023. AI accounted for 25% of all job cuts in March. The economists who said this would not happen changed their minds.
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The thing everyone was warned about is happening, and the people who said it would not happen are now saying it will.
US tech layoffs have hit their worst year-to-date point since 2023, according to new data from Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Tech companies have announced 52,050 job cuts so far in 2026, including 18,720 in March alone. That first-quarter figure is up 40% from last year.
The headline number is bad. The reason behind it is worse: AI was the single leading cause of job cuts across all industries in March, accounting for 25% of total layoffs. Not restructuring. Not recession. Not poor earnings. AI.
Companies are shifting budgets toward AI investments at the expense of jobs, Challenger said. The actual replacing of roles can be seen in Technology companies, where AI can replace coding functions.
This lands at the same moment The New York Times published a piece titled Economists Once Dismissed the AI Job Threat, But Not Anymore. The consensus among economists has shifted dramatically: AI has not disrupted the labor market yet, but they are increasingly convinced it will, and policymakers are unprepared.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warned that AI could disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1 to 5 years. When the person building the technology and the people studying the economy agree that displacement is coming, it is probably coming.
The list of companies citing AI in their layoff decisions keeps growing: Atlassian, Block, IBM, and Oracle have all pointed to AI as a factor. Oracle is particularly brazen. The company laid off thousands while simultaneously filing thousands of H-1B visa petitions. The message: we do not need American workers, but we still need workers. Just cheaper ones.
Sam Altman says some companies are AI washing their layoffs. That may be true. But when 25% of all March job cuts cite AI as the primary reason, the washing metaphor stops working. At some point the water is just wet.
As one former Oracle employee told Business Insider: It is not a good time to be in tech. It just is not. Challenger expects the trend to accelerate through 2026.
First reported by Business Insider via Challenger, Gray and Christmas data. Economist analysis via The New York Times.