- March 2026 was the worst month for layoffs since 2024
- Tech companies are cutting workforces to invest in artificial intelligence
- Entry-level jobs are declining, and other jobs may be next
March 2026 has been the worst month for tech job cuts in the past two years, with over 38,000 employees now out of work.
According to layoff tracking website Layoffs.fyi, the majority of March layoffs come from Oracle, which cut 30,000 jobs in March after a poor end to the year and a $300 million deal with OpenAI.
Atlassian also announced a 1,600 job cut with a shift towards a new AI strategy, and Epic Games cut 1,000 jobs after experiencing a drop in engagement with its hit game Fortnite.
The article continues below
The worst is yet to come
In March, Meta announced plans to cut 20% of its workforce, or about 16,000 employees, but has since confirmed a reduction of 10%, or 8,000 employees, instead. Several other companies, including Microsoft, Block, Amazon and eBay have all cut their workforces over the past few months.
Many companies are turning to artificial intelligence and automation to increase efficiency, productivity and revenue. It comes with the unfortunate downside that some employees are therefore perceived as redundant and their jobs are terminated.
Seam The Wall Street Journal reports, this comes with a warning. Many companies are trying to outdo each other on artificial intelligence, which has become something of an unofficial measure of a company’s success. To pay the bill for new data centers and chips, jobs are usually the first to go.
More and more money is being spent and more and more CEOs need to justify that the investment in AI is sound and actually delivers the benefits it has promised. If not, cut more jobs and invest more in artificial intelligence.
It could be argued that businesses are simply compensating for the rapid over-hiring that occurred after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the number of job openings has now fallen below the 2018 peak, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).
AI is already shrinking the job market for new graduates. In a 2025 interview with Axios, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all white-collar jobs within the next five years. If the efficiencies and productivity gains AI companies promise come true, it could further bite into white-collar jobs as a whole.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds.
