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 employee said the company plans to replace some of the fired workers with new employees with an AI skill set and another said the company is “going to push AI for everyday work and everything else.”
Armstrong, in an email to Coinbase employees Tuesday, blames a “volatile” crypto market and AI for the roughly 700 job cuts, explaining that some teams will be cut down to singular people expected to do the same job of many with the help of AI agents, directing remaining employees to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”
Meta will layoff 10% of its workforce and won’t hire workers for 6,000 open jobs in hopes of offsetting the money it’s spending to integrate artificial intelligence into the company. Meta’s announced job cuts, roughly 8,000 scheduled for May 20, are part of a plan initially reported by Reuters to layoff what could amount to more than 20% of the company (which employs roughly 75,000 people) as it invests in AI and plans to utilize AI-assisted workers.
Billionaire Evan Spiegel tells employees of Snap, the parent company of social media app Snapchat, that 1,000 jobs would be cut because “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence” will allow the same work to be done by a smaller group of people. The move is expected to save the company $500 million by the second half of 2026.
Oracle, founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, is cutting 20,000 to 30,000 employees as the company heavily invests in building out AI infrastructure.
Meta, led by the world’s fifth-richest-person Mark Zuckerberg, lays off 700 people, the New York Times reported, in cuts that “underline how much A.I. has changed the tech industry.”
Crypto.com lays off 12%, or about 180, of its employees as it integrates “enterprise-wide AI,” with CEO Kris Marszalek explaining the jobs that were cut were “roles that do not adapt in our new world.”
Software company Atlassian cuts roughly 10% of its workforce—1,600 people—in order to “self-fund further investment in AI,” with co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes saying he “fundamentally believes people and AI create the best outcomes.”
Block, billionaire Jack Dorsey‘s company, cuts more than 4,000 jobs (almost half the company’s staff) in a major restructuring to integrate AI and create smaller, faster teams.
Software company WiseTech Global says it’s eliminating about one-third of employees (2,000 jobs) over the next two years to restructure around artificial intelligence.
It is first reported that Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 people in marketing, product management, data analytics and the company’s Agentforce AI product at the start of the year, cuts that came about six months after Salesforce CEO and billionaire Marc Benioff blamed AI for axing 4,000 support staff jobs.
Social media platform Pinterest says it would cut about 15% of its workforce (about 800 people based on a headcount of 5,200 at the end of 2025) to reallocate money toward AI-focused roles, sending its stock tumbling nearly 10%.
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“In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era,” Armstrong, Coinbase CEO, said. “This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”
49,135. That’s how many layoffs have been blamed on AI so far this year, according to career services firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. AI was cited for almost 55,000 cuts in 2025.
Tech CEOs have recently warned middle management and white collar jobs are likely to be the most vulnerable in the AI renaissance. Billionaire Dario Amodei, founder and CEO of AI giant Anthropic, last year said artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and send unemployment soaring. He accused AI companies and government officials of “sugar-coating” the reality that mass job eliminations are likely coming in technology, finance, law and other sectors. Dorsey and former Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha last month said they think AI can do much of what middle managers, or about 12% of the workforce, do today. Just Capital, a nonprofit that conducts business-related polling, this week said one-third of the public worries about significant layoffs due to AI displacing roles. More than half of corporate leaders polled said they think hiring will slow for entry-level positions in the coming years, and that remaining jobs will require employees to be more skilled than before. Other analysis suggests tech jobs are much more at risk than roles in other sectors. America’s Census Bureau estimates that companies in tech-heavy areas like San Francisco, Boston and Seattle are using AI at a much higher rate than the rest of the country.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers says new grads aren’t having as hard of a time finding entry-level jobs as predicted. The association’s annual survey, out in April, shows employers expect to boost new-graduate hires by 5.6% this spring from a year ago. Unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees and higher also dropped in March, to 5.3% from 8.9% last fall. Benioff said Salesforce is currently hiring 1,000 new graduates and interns right now to “ride the AI exponential.” “They said AI would kill entry-level jobs. Meanwhile these grads & interns are building it — powering Agentforce & Headless360 at Salesforce,” Benioff said. Billionaire OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently criticized companies for “AI washing” by blaming unrelated layoffs on artificial intelligence.
A Chinese court recently said companies aren’t allowed to replace or demote employees just because artificial intelligence systems are now able to do the same jobs. The ruling is similar to another in the country several months ago that decided AI implementation is not a good enough reason to end an employee contract.