Tech Layoffs and Cyber Shortage
First‑quarter tech job cuts continue to mount, with trackers reporting more than 60,000 layoffs since January and some analyses putting Q1 cuts between 78,000 and 90,000. At the same time cybersecurity roles remain hard to fill and many security professionals plan to leave unless retention and compensation improve. (northpennnow.com) (itpro.com)
Tech companies have kept cutting jobs into 2026, even as employers still struggle to hire and keep cybersecurity staff. (layoffs.fyi) Layoffs.fyi showed 71,447 tech employees laid off across 80 companies as of April 14, 2026. TrueUp’s broader tracker put the 2026 total at 91,739 people affected across 230 layoff events as of April 13. (layoffs.fyi) (trueup.io) The counts differ because the trackers measure different slices of the market. Layoffs.fyi focuses on tech and startup layoffs, while TrueUp says it tracks layoffs across big tech, tech unicorns, and startups. (layoffs.fyi) (trueup.io) At the same time, cybersecurity is still a labor shortage business. CyberSeek says the United States had 514,359 cybersecurity job openings during its latest reporting period, and about 10% of those listings specifically asked for artificial intelligence skills. (cyberseek.org 1) (cyberseek.org 2) That mismatch has been building for more than a year. The 2024 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study said the global cybersecurity workforce held at 5.5 million people, while 67% of respondents reported staffing shortages and 90% reported skills gaps on their teams. (isc2.org) Budget pressure is part of the explanation. ISC2 said “lack of budget” replaced “lack of qualified talent” as the top cause of staffing shortages in 2024, and 37% of respondents reported budget cuts while a quarter said layoffs had hit their security teams. (isc2.org) (itpro.com) Retention looks shaky too. ITPro reported on April 14, 2026 that IANS Research and Artico Search found only 34% of cybersecurity professionals plan to stay with their current employer over the next year, citing shrinking budgets and expanding workloads. (itpro.com) The wider tech market is not collapsing across the board. CompTIA said U.S. net tech employment was about 9.6 million workers in 2025 and is projected to reach about 9.8 million in 2026, with tech occupations across the economy forecast to add roughly 128,000 jobs. (comptia.org) CompTIA also said replacement hiring remains heavy, averaging about 323,000 workers a year as people retire or leave the field. That helps explain how layoffs and persistent vacancies can happen in the same market at the same time. (comptia.org) For workers, the split is stark in April 2026: companies are still shrinking some teams, but security roles remain open, specialized, and hard to hold onto. The next signal will be whether employers raise pay, cut workloads, or keep trying to do more with fewer people. (itpro.com) (cyberseek.org)
