Allwork.space: AI hiring rises

The tech job market is doing two opposite things at once. Companies are cutting people hard, but they are still paying up for a narrower kind of worker — someone senior, technical, and comfortable shipping with AI. That is the real story in the new Allwork.Space piece from May 6. It is not “AI is killing jobs” or “AI is creating jobs.” It is a sorting machine. ### What changed this week? Allwork.Space pulled together fresh Toptal hiring data and a separate KPMG Canada survey, and the combination is pretty stark. Toptal says demand for experienced remote and hybrid technology and professional-services workers rose 8.9% from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 and 4.8% from a year earlier. At the same time, job postings across major economies still fell about 3% quarter over quarter and 8% year over year. ### So why do layoffs keep rising? Because companies are not expanding evenly. They are cutting broad headcount, flattening teams, and redirecting money into AI infrastructure and the people who can make that infrastructure useful. In the same Toptal-based Allwork.Space writeup, tech layoffs rose 142% from the previous quarter and 140% from a year earlier in Q1 2026. One giant event mattered a lot here — Oracle’s reported 30,000-worker reduction at the end of the quarter. ### Is this just an Oracle distortion? Not entirely. Oracle made the quarter look more dramatic, but the underlying pattern shows up elsewhere too. Challenger data cited by Allwork.Space in April showed tech companies announced 52,050 cuts year to date through March, up 40% from the same period in 2025. AI was named in 15,341 March layoffs alone — 25% of all cuts that month — and 27,645 cuts year to date, about 13% of announced layoffs. ### Who is still getting hired? Mostly experienced people who can sit between tools and outcomes. Toptal’s framing is useful here: the strongest demand is for workers with technical depth, AI fluency, business judgment, and communication skills. That mix matters because companies do not just want prompt writers or pure coders. They want people who can redesign workflows, supervise automation, and tie AI projects to revenue or cost savings. ### Why are junior roles getting squeezed? Because the first tasks AI absorbs are often the routine pieces that used to train entry-level workers. Allwork.Space says opportunities for junior employees and generalist roles keep weakening as employers rethink workforce structure. KPMG’s Canada survey points the same way: 77% of surveyed companies already use AI agents, and many are execution. ### What does “agentic AI” change here? Basically, it raises the bar from “use AI as a tool” to “manage AI as a teammate.” KPMG’s survey describes companies preparing for workplaces where employees and AI agents work side by side. That means hiring changes too — less emphasis on raw task volume, more on orchestration, verification, exception handling, and trust. The catch is that those are usually not entry-level strengths. ### Does remote work still matter? Yes — and maybe more than people expected. Toptal says the best near-term outlook remains concentrated in experienced remote and hybrid tech and professional-services roles. So this is not just an AI story. It is also a flexibility story, where companies want specialized talent but do not necessarily want to rebuild big in-office org charts to get it. ### What is the bottom line? The labor market is not shrinking in one clean direction. It is being carved up. Companies are cutting for efficiency, but they are still hiring for leverage. If you can help deploy AI, supervise it, or turn it into measurable output, demand is holding up. If your role depends on being the low-cost human layer for repeatable work, the pressure is getting worse.