By August, 2026 had already done something 2025 needed all twelve months to accomplish: it beat that year's entire tech layoff total. According to data tracked by Salesforce Ben, this year's cuts span more than 250 companies and could push the industry's cumulative layoff count since 2022 past one million by next year. For comparison, 2022 alone saw 165,269 layoffs and 2024 came in around 153,000. Whatever 2026 ends up totaling, it got there faster than any recent year on record — the 100,000-layoff mark that took until late October to hit in 2025 was reached by June this year.
The names doing the cutting are not scrappy startups burning through venture money. Oracle alone shed 30,000 employees in a round described as "historical." Salesforce cut nearly 1,000 workers at the start of the year and kept trimming into August. ServiceNow ran multiple rounds across the year. These are mature, profitable companies with the cash to keep people employed. They are choosing not to.
The stated reason, over and over, is artificial intelligence. "We're definitely witnessing a shift in jobs due to AI," Vernon Keenan of Keenan Vision told Salesforce Ben. But Keenan's other observation is the more honest one: "If you look at what CEOs are saying and what they want to do, I think that they would love to have growth without a lot of employees." AI is a convenient cover story for what boards have wanted for years — the same output, the same revenue, fewer American salaries on the books.
What doesn't get mentioned in the press releases is who backfills the roles that don't disappear outright. Tech has spent a decade normalizing the practice of laying off domestic engineers while continuing to file visa petitions for cheaper labor abroad or on H-1B status. A round of layoffs framed as "AI transformation" says nothing about whether the surviving headcount, or the next hire, is even American. It rarely is required to.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Every one of these companies is a repeat player in the H-1B lottery, and every one of them has spent the last two years talking about AI-driven efficiency in earnings calls while their stock prices reward exactly that story. Workers who spent a decade building skills in these companies are being told the math no longer favors them — while the same firms lobby to keep the visa pipeline open for workers who cost less and can't easily walk away from a sponsoring employer.
The tech layoff wave of 2022-2023 was supposed to be a correction after pandemic-era overhiring. 2026 makes clear it was never a correction — it's the new operating model. Cut American headcount, cite AI, keep filing visa paperwork, and let the narrative do the rest.
Read the original reporting at Salesforce Ben.