Oracle, Amazon and Meta Drive Record AI Layoffs

Oracle, Amazon and Meta have each cut deep this year, and a growing share of those losses now come with the same justification: AI.

Oracle, under Co-CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia, has shed more than 25,000 roles in an AI and cloud reorganisation. Amazon has cut tens of thousands of corporate jobs since late 2025, and Meta has trimmed thousands more. They are the marquee names in a trend now reshaping the US labour market.

AI has become the single most common reason employers give for cutting jobs. It accounted for 40% of announced cuts in May, up from just 7% in January, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The 38,579 roles attributed to automation that month are the most the firm has logged since it began tracking the reason in 2023.

“AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs,” the firm reports, noting that employers are restructuring aggressively as they reposition for an AI-driven economy.

The annual numbers show how fast the shift has come. AI has been cited in 87,714 cuts so far in 2026, dwarfing the 54,836 of all of 2025 and the 12,742 of 2024 combined.

Each month worse than the last

The wider layoff picture is darkening alongside it. US employers announced more than 97,000 job cuts in May, the highest total for the month since the pandemic year of 2020, and the third straight month of rising losses.

The trend line is relentless. Cuts climbed from 48,307 in February to 60,620 in March, then 83,387 in April, before May broke through 97,000, Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports.

Technology is the hardest-hit industry by a distance, with job cuts now running at nearly three times the level of the next worst sector. Across the global tech industry, trackers like TrueUp count close to 140,000 losses in the first five months of 2026, roughly 900 every working day.

Is AI really doing the cutting?

Not everyone is convinced the machines deserve the blame. Several economists warn that AI has become a convenient headline for decisions driven by cost and over-hiring.

"We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs," says Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon.

Even so, the share of cuts pinned on AI keeps climbing, from 10% in February to a quarter by April and 40% in May, according to the Challenger report.

The broader data complicates the doom narrative. US payrolls rose by 172,000 in May, with March and April revised upwards, suggesting AI’s bite is concentrated in technology rather than spread across the economy.

Nowhere new to land

Whatever the cause, the exits are not being matched by entrances. Challenger recorded just 80,742 planned hires in May, weak by pre-pandemic standards, leaving displaced workers with fewer landing spots.

The jobs being created are not the jobs being lost, and the gap between them is where the anxiety lives.

For the giants leading the cuts, the rationale is the same story investors want to hear, a leaner workforce built for an AI-driven future.

Whether AI is genuinely cutting these jobs or simply taking the blame, the losses are real and the hiring to absorb them is not.