Tech layoffs continue globally

The tech job market has spent the first 100 days of 2026 doing something that looked impossible a few years ago: shrinking fast even while companies keep talking about artificial intelligence growth. Layoffs.fyi’s tracker showed about 70,474 tech job cuts in the first quarter of 2026, versus 29,845 in the same period of 2025 and 57,269 in the same period of 2024. (layoffs.fyi) (finance.yahoo.com) This is not one company blowing up. Reporting on the quarter said roughly 78,000 to 80,000 tech jobs were cut globally, and about three quarters of those cuts were in the United States, which means the pain is concentrated in the world’s biggest tech labor market. (finance.yahoo.com) The cuts are also not limited to startups running out of cash. The tracker includes large public companies and younger venture-backed firms, which makes 2026 look less like a single crash and more like a broad reset in how many people tech companies think they need. (layoffs.fyi) (techspot.com) Artificial intelligence is part of the story, but not in the simple “robots took the jobs” way. Challenger, Gray and Christmas said United States employers announced 60,620 job cuts in March 2026, up 25% from February, and artificial intelligence was the leading cited reason in 25% of those announcements. (challengergray.com) (forbes.com) That still leaves three quarters of March’s cuts explained by other things: restructuring, office closures, slower demand, and the long hangover from overhiring during 2020 and 2021. Companies are using the artificial intelligence buildout as a reason to cut some roles and fund different ones at the same time. (challengergray.com) (techspot.com) That is why the labor market looks contradictory from the outside. Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest information technology services company, reported fourth-quarter revenue of 70,698 crore rupees and net profit of 13,718 crore rupees for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, while adding 2,356 employees in that quarter. (tcs.com) (financialexpress.com) But even that brighter example comes with a catch. Tata Consultancy Services ended fiscal year 2026 with 584,519 employees, which was still down by more than 23,000 from the prior year, so its small quarter of hiring came after a much larger year of shrinking. (financialexpress.com) (deccanherald.com) The pattern across tech now looks less like a hiring freeze and more like a seat swap on a moving train. Companies are cutting recruiters, middle managers, support teams, and duplicate product groups while still paying for cloud engineers, cybersecurity specialists, data workers, and people who can sell or deliver artificial intelligence projects. (deccanherald.com) (tcs.com) That helps explain why headlines can say “80,000 jobs gone” and “selective hiring continues” in the same week without either one being wrong. The market is not closed; it is narrower, pickier, and tilted toward roles tied to revenue, infrastructure, and artificial intelligence delivery. (layoffs.fyi) (tcs.com) For workers, that means the old tech promise of “once you are in, you are safe” has weakened again in 2026. For companies, it means layoffs are no longer just emergency cost cutting; they are being used as a way to move money from yesterday’s org chart into this year’s artificial intelligence budget. (challengergray.com) (finance.yahoo.com)