According to a recent report, US IT employment experienced its worst start to the year since 2023, with tens of thousands of severe job cutbacks attributed to AI.
Based to a research released on Thursday by executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, there were 52,050 tech layoffs in the first three months of 2026, a 40% increase from the same period last year.
The cuts are increasingly attributed to artificial intelligence.
AI accounted for 15,341 of the tech layoffs in March, or 25% of the total, and was the top reason given by companies. The percentage was 10% just one month prior.
In the midst of falling stock prices and going on debt for AI projects, Oracle announced thousands of layoffs last week.
According to the report, Meta announced in March that it was preparing widespread layoffs, with 20% of its staff, or roughly 15,000 employees, at risk. The company’s significant investments in AI were meant to be compensated by the substantial cuts.
Amazon announced in January that it will fire 16,000 corporate workers, claiming artificial intelligence would take their place.
This followed the announcement in October that the online retailer was laying off 14,000 corporate employees.
According to Challenger, Dell eliminated 11,000 positions in the first three months of the year, making it the largest tech massacre at a single business while layoffs at other companies continued.
Budgets for AI investments are being shifted by businesses at the expense of employment. According to Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI can actually replace coding duties in tech organizations. This new technology is being tested by other industries, and although it cannot entirely replace occupations, it is costing jobs.
For months, tech leaders have been raising the alarm.
AI will eliminate almost half of all white-collar occupations in one to five years, according to a January letter from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, recently found himself in hot water after arguing on a podcast last month that people should accept being replaced by artificial intelligence since they don’t like their employment.
CEO Jack Dorsey of Block attributed a recent round of 4,000 layoffs—a staggering 40% of the company’s workforce—to the new technology and warned of more to come.
He said on X, “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re developing and using, along with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” “And that’s picking up speed.”
According to Challenger, the first quarter of the year had 217,362 job cutbacks across all industries, the lowest quarterly number since 2022. The total was down 56% from the first quarter of 2025 and 16% from the last quarter of 2025.
Employers have cited closings, restructurings, and economic conditions as the causes for layoffs thus far this year, aside from AI.
As reported by Challenger, firms in the United States disclosed 60,620 job cutbacks in March alone, a 25% increase from February.
It stated that 18,720 of the layoffs in March were related to technology.
