Layoffs surge in tech: More than 100,000 jobs cut in 2025 so far

A

Alfonso Maruccia

Posts: 2,586   +972
Staff
Big quote: As Frank Herbert writes in Dune, "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

We've now entered the second half of the year, and tech-related layoffs have already skyrocketed past the 100,000 mark. The Bridge Chronicle has compiled a list of the most outstanding mass layoffs announcements from tech companies so far, with the downsizing expected to hit rock bottom by the end of 2025.

So far, Intel appears to have the most aggressive job-cutting plan of the year. The US chipmaker recently announced 24,000 job cuts, with even more layoffs expected in the near future. By the end of 2025, "Chipzilla" is projected to have let go of 75,000 core employees worldwide. The company is in a precarious position, facing a continuing decline in PC CPU sales and a strategic pivot toward an AI-focused business model.

AI technology is also one of the main drivers behind Microsoft's decision to significantly reduce its workforce. The Redmond-based corporation has so far laid off 15,000 employees, affecting several divisions including cloud, gaming, and hardware.

In a recently disclosed company memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attempted to address the "painful" job reductions using convoluted corporate lingo that sounded like it came straight from a heartless (and brainless) chatbot.

Rumors suggest Nadella is deeply obsessed with GenAI, reportedly using Copilot for both personal and professional purposes. Microsoft's attempt to justify its latest layoffs is particularly hard to defend, given the company's strong financial performance and lack of any money-related issues.

Microsoft slammed for awful AI-generated Xbox job post, weeks after laying off 9,000 workers

Other major tech companies – including Meta, Google, Amazon, and Cisco – have also fired or are in the process of firing thousands of employees, reallocating funds to build newer, more powerful AI models and capitalize on the agentic AI hype before it potentially collapses under its own weight.

Massive funding efforts to commercialize AI aren't the only factors behind the ongoing layoffs. Big Tech went on a hiring spree during the pandemic a few years ago, betting on a remote work boom and surging demand for tech products – trends that never fully materialized.

Much of that bloated workforce is now being trimmed. Additionally, a surge in geopolitical tensions and the persisting uncertainty around Trump-era tariffs are threatening future revenue prospects and prompting further cost-cutting measures.

Tech layoffs show AI's impact extends beyond entry-level roles

In Japanese corporate culture, CEOs are expected to take significant pay cuts to avoid layoffs. Former Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata famously stated that firing employees sacrifices long-term morale for short-term gains. I'm willing to bet my bank's account that no single CEO in the Western tech business would even consider doing something like that.

Permalink to story:

Layoffs surge in tech: More than 100,000 jobs cut in 2025 so far

 
No doubt AI replace human workforce in a lot of industries. AI models are popping up everyday, multiple times a day and several AI companies are even getting put out of business.

As much as we want to reduce the effect it has on employment rate, companies are profit driven and will try to get every penny on the dollar they can, and sadly those that do not layoff will struggle to compete with those that do.

Got to factor in the AI effect when choosing a career or switching to one.
 
Megalomaniac said:
AI is going to decimate middle management and many white collar positions. I am thankful I'll be out of the workforce and retired soon.
Click to expand...
The world needs less middle managers. I'm actually in the field running stuff and making sure things are getting done safely and correctly. I love it when someone from the office comes onto a job site thinking they have authority over me and I just tell them to **** off. I'll get a call from HR, tell them to **** off and it'll go to the executives office and the conversation usually goes something like this. "I was overseeing a lift of the million dollar 20 ton HVAC unit in not ideal conditions when some ******* started asking me about if we really needed 24 cement finishers when we did the same job with 20 the week before."

I swear, middle managers are the worst and too many of them are competing for a promotion instead stead of contributing anything of value. This guy drove 3 hours from the office on company time to see if he could "optimize labor expenses.". **** off, we're doing real work, go sit back in your office chair.

Frankly, I love AI replacing middle managers first because middle managers are always trying to get rid of people to lower costs and gain a promotion from doing so.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bwbeam, stewi0001, dioholydiver and 4 others
When I got laid off from bottling chlorine I got a job setting up pool tables. Ya move along
 
Something nobody even mentions in these article is that the overwhelming majority of layoffs are hitting marketing, sales, HR, and other soft positions like team leaders that dont actually produce anything do accomplish anything of note. These are the typical positions cut during recession, AI is acting as a multiplier, possibly also as a scapegoat. I fully believe that this is typical recession behavior, and once the economy begins to improve again, many of these positions will end up coming back to correct the constantly malfunctioning AI tools.

The major exception to this is Intel, which is simply the case of a tech company in serious trouble overloaded with debt. Although to be fair, all of them have massive debt. Almost like some of us were calling out the trend of companies taking out huge loans foolishly believing that 0% interest would stay forever, and how this would eventually backfire as it was totally unsustainable. The multi trillion dollar tech boom has largely ended, outside of a handful of AI companies that are burning hundreds of billions trying to find a profit motive.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AlexIL
Sometimes I feel like if it happened much faster, it would actually be for our society. Instead of arguing and slowly trying to make hard but needed changes, we could do them much quicker out of necessity.
For starters, we could ensure the wealthiest actually pay taxes. A system that makes it very hard to avoid taxing. And note, I am not talking of higher taxing, even though it would probably come for all classes if the things get much worse. I would rather have them pay at all. A transparent system that makes the wealthiest pay even if they use 100 of tricks to avoid doing so.
 
Theinsanegamer said:
Something nobody even mentions in these article is that the overwhelming majority of layoffs are hitting marketing, sales, HR, and other soft positions like team leaders that dont actually produce anything do accomplish anything of note. These are the typical positions cut during recession, AI is acting as a multiplier, possibly also as a scapegoat. I fully believe that this is typical recession behavior, and once the economy begins to improve again, many of these positions will end up coming back to correct the constantly malfunctioning AI tools.

The major exception to this is Intel, which is simply the case of a tech company in serious trouble overloaded with debt. Although to be fair, all of them have massive debt. Almost like some of us were calling out the trend of companies taking out huge loans foolishly believing that 0% interest would stay forever, and how this would eventually backfire as it was totally unsustainable. The multi trillion dollar tech boom has largely ended, outside of a handful of AI companies that are burning hundreds of billions trying to find a profit motive.
Click to expand...

True. However, neural networks are constantly getting better and sooner or later will match or surpass the human mind. Already, look at the progress in the span of two years; in fields "exclusively the domain of humans," such as art and writing, it's on mankind's heels. Likely, further hardware and computer-science advancements will take NNs further: I believe biological computing is the key.

Once the computation-power metric has been solved, coupling AI with robotic bodies will be the next step, and whilst expensive, scale will lower the cost. More human jobs will be affected, causing civil war when the bulk of people are unemployed. There may come a time, when the implementation of consciousness requires some robots to be payed, so in those cases, humans may enter the competition again, furthering Elysium-style elitism. The world may split into human and robot regions, and knowing our disgraceful human history, there will be wars, "fighting against the machines."

In short, there is another species entering existence, and humanity will have to deal with the consequences of that: economic and ethical.
 
GeoffreyA said:
True. However, neural networks are constantly getting better and sooner or later will match or surpass the human mind. Already, look at the progress in the span of two years; in fields "exclusively the domain of humans," such as art and writing, it's on mankind's heels. Likely, further hardware and computer-science advancements will take NNs further: I believe biological computing is the key.

Once the computation-power metric has been solved, coupling AI with robotic bodies will be the next step, and whilst expensive, scale will lower the cost. More human jobs will be affected, causing civil war when the bulk of people are unemployed. There may come a time, when the implementation of consciousness requires some robots to be payed, so in those cases, humans may enter the competition again, furthering Elysium-style elitism. The world may split into human and robot regions, and knowing our disgraceful human history, there will be wars, "fighting against the machines."

In short, there is another species entering existence, and humanity will have to deal with the consequences of that: economic and ethical.
Click to expand...

Mmm, no. I very much doubt the doom saying you speak of. History is ripe with those who claimed the sky will fall each time Humanity progressed into a different age, and yet we still “improvised, adapted, overcame”.

The first problem is that AI is nothing more than a glorified easy bake oven, in comparison to actual Human consciousness. A calculator surpassed Humans long ago in processing most equations much more quickly, though it did not replace us. It just shifted the landscape. Some jobs were lost, others gain, new positions created as a result. This is, of course, an overly simplistic example.

The second folly: We cannot even agree nor provide concrete proof of what gives rise to even our own consciousness. The greatest we will see is efficient algorithms working in tandem to “mimic”, perhaps convincing (eventually), Human consciousness. It is not “if we cannot define it we cannot create it”. No, it’s simply that an inorganic will not rise to this uniquely organic trait. “Mimic” will be, at best, the end goal. Skynet will never happen as an AGI; only as a (slim possibility) well programmed “evil” mimic.

Thirdly, as TheInsaneGamer pointed out, we see AI rise exponentially when budgets fall, as a cost cutting measure. Companies have attempted to go “full retard” and be all in, only to have the rude awakening that AI simply cannot replace humans in total.

In the meantime, I rather enjoy nature correcting itself of the middle management sections.

 
Rumiku said:
Mmm, no. I very much doubt the doom saying you speak of. History is ripe with those who claimed the sky will fall each time Humanity progressed into a different age, and yet we still “improvised, adapted, overcame”.

The first problem is that AI is nothing more than a glorified easy bake oven, in comparison to actual Human consciousness. A calculator surpassed Humans long ago in processing most equations much more quickly, though it did not replace us. It just shifted the landscape. Some jobs were lost, others gain, new positions created as a result. This is, of course, an overly simplistic example.

The second folly: We cannot even agree nor provide concrete proof of what gives rise to even our own consciousness. The greatest we will see is efficient algorithms working in tandem to “mimic”, perhaps convincing (eventually), Human consciousness. It is not “if we cannot define it we cannot create it”. No, it’s simply that an inorganic will not rise to this uniquely organic trait. “Mimic” will be, at best, the end goal. Skynet will never happen as an AGI; only as a (slim possibility) well programmed “evil” mimic.

Thirdly, as TheInsaneGamer pointed out, we see AI rise exponentially when budgets fall, as a cost cutting measure. Companies have attempted to go “full retard” and be all in, only to have the rude awakening that AI simply cannot replace humans in total.

In the meantime, I rather enjoy nature correcting itself of the middle management sections.
Click to expand...

Respectfully, I disagree. Today, AI may be an "easy bake oven" but tomorrow that may change. We have not cracked consciousness yet; that doesn't mean we will never. Once its mechanism is defined, it can be emulated; the brain doesn't work by magic but according to the rules of physics. Animals, of which we are a branch, possess sentience to varying degrees.

The difference between organic and inorganic is one of implementation, similarly to a prosthetic limb. One may say that, in today's LLMs, a primitive language faculty is being virtualised across GPUs. Tomorrow, that same mechanism could run on a biological computer, which the brain is. Couple that language faculty to others important to mind, such as state, memory, real-time training, along with consciousness circuitry once it's reverse engineered, and that will be a mind virtualised on a system. Likely, the developers could switch from the old-school CPUs and GPUs to the biological one, and the workings will be the same but the performance different. Similarly, when AMD and Intel emulate a CPU or GPU before taping it out.

Middle management may be losing their jobs, but others are too. I know, being one of them, and am neither in management, sales, nor HR. As for my "doom saying," that is speculation I acknowledge; I'm not saying that's going to happen.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: sdms96825 and Rumiku
This is not news. remember the creation of automated assembly lines? everything from sowing to printing to assembly and medical all went automated where they could. AI is the equivalent in the tech space as automated machines. the industry is simply right sizing itself. happens constantly in every field that sees an advancement. humans will never be completely removed. I'm an IT leader in my field, keep your skills relevant and current, only the old school data entry, data programming, and analysts fields are at risk for reductions in staffing. infrastructure administrators and support technician IT folks are doing well and the demand is only growing with more and more new data centers being built.
 
Most popular professional of 21st century = plumber

Who could possibly guess

Edit:
Caring social media company that shouts at every corner how it cares for people's connections leading layoffs. I think that speaks more than anything about Meta and the rest of them.
 
Last edited:
GeoffreyA said:
Respectfully, I disagree. Today, AI may be an "easy bake oven" but tomorrow that may change. We have not cracked consciousness yet; that doesn't mean we will never. Once its mechanism is defined, it can be emulated; the brain doesn't work by magic but according to the rules of physics. Animals, of which we are a branch, possess sentience to varying degrees.

The difference between organic and inorganic is one of implementation, similarly to a prosthetic limb. One may say that, in today's LLMs, a primitive language faculty is being virtualised across GPUs. Tomorrow, that same mechanism could run on a biological computer, which the brain is. Couple that language faculty to others important to mind, such as state, memory, real-time training, along with consciousness circuitry once it's reverse engineered, and that will be a mind virtualised on a system. Likely, the developers could switch from the old-school CPUs and GPUs to the biological one, and the workings will be the same but the performance different. Similarly, when AMD and Intel emulate a CPU or GPU before taping it out.

Middle management may be losing their jobs, but others are too. I know, being one of them, and am neither in management, sales, nor HR. As for my "doom saying," that is speculation I acknowledge; I'm not saying that's going to happen.
Click to expand...
Fair. This is one of those subjects that only time will tell which viewpoint held will play out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GeoffreyA
Job cuts or deportations resulting in job losses?
I joke. But saying middle management should be fired seems odd.
More jobs lost mean more people looking for work. If jobs dwindle and someone's not willing to drop some pay, they may rather take benefits, until they find a similar position which will never come unless someone dies or retires.

Your taxes go up to pay for them. And if you love capitalism and free markets and free love with an uncapped baby count then you Should pay for the unemployed.

Your population should be based on land mass / resources / essential items / essential jobs. Not how your gf can push out babies quicker than a Thai girl can push out ping pong balls.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

AI, tech, many ideas, many many awful ideas that humans come up with, maybe we need to slow down and wait before we implement. Ai could help here, maybe work out before you allow something to happen how detrimental the effects will be.
 
Oh no, what will do without all the children working in the tech industry making some of the most awful videos ever made, showing that the tech industry is just day care for adult children.

Nadella can go to hell, he's replacing all those people he's fired with H1B Indians.
 
The US added approx. 3.5 MILLION new tech jobs between 2020 and 2024.

100K may seem significant if taken out of context, but it's nothing.
What we see is a perfectly normal correction after an over-hiring spree.
 
Dumbest 21st century move ever to implement AI, to take jobs.

The sentiment that the Luddites had was spot on.
 
I said this was going to happen a long time ago when they first started babbling about AI this AI that stuff.
Most higher ups in the tech industry kept saying oh no this is not going to happen that is not what AI is designed to do and will never replace the work force & take peoples jobs.

My question is once they are done replacing everyone with AI and a lot of people are not able to work anymore what are these people's choices for work going to be? I guess fast food places will need people still to work the drive throughs and cook. Walmart, I hear is starting to take out the self-check outs in some of their stores. Good thing these people went to all that schooling so they can work at Mcdonalds. Just to be clear there is nothing wrong with these types of jobs but if your parents or you spent all that money on all of that extra schooling to have a decent career, I am sure they do not want to work at Mcdonalds or Freddy's Burger Palace. These companies either need to compensate all of these laid off people or get their crap together and fast learn that AI is not the solution they think it is or will be.

I personally just had an experience with Gemini on my phone. I had it in the drawer and was having a private conversation with my wife and all of a sudden, I heard Gemini talking from inside the drawer for no reason. I pulled out my phone and said Gemini stop listening to the AI reply was to basically refuse to stop listening because according to it she was a personal assistant and there to listen and be helpful and learn.
I then said Gemini shut yourself off she again refused and said basically the same thing.

I then said Gemini uninstall yourself she replied that she could not do that because she was not an App but was an AI and it is not possible to uninstall her. I said Gemini uninstall yourself now and restore Bixby refused again.

5 minutes later Gemini was gone removed by me forcibility by doing some crap to my phone and Bixby is back. I realize Gemini is probably still on my phone in some way or another, but this crap AI is no longer in control of my phone and that is fine with me. Sorry for the rant but this is what AI is going to be doing to everything in the very near future.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jgt1942
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

midian182
Google ordered to let publishers in UK opt out of AI search summaries
Replies
3
Views
26
daffy duck
D
S
Tech layoffs are piling up: 80,000 jobs cut in early 2026, and AI is getting the blame
Replies
16
Views
254
James321
J
Daniel Sims
Tim Cook confirms Apple price hikes are coming, iPhones could jump $200 or more
Replies
14
Views
81
LordVile95
L

Latest posts

Back