Just weeks into 2026, the global technology sector is already showing signs that workforce reductions are not slowing down. More than 30,000 tech employees have been laid off worldwide since January, placing the industry on a trajectory that could easily surpass last year’s totals if the current pace continues.
The wave of redundancies follows several years of post-pandemic correction, during which nearly a million tech jobs were eliminated globally. What began as a pullback from pandemic-era overexpansion has evolved into a structural shift in how technology companies operate. In 2025, automation, artificial intelligence integration, and sustained cost-discipline measures drove much of the downsizing, with entire departments restructured or eliminated in favour of leaner, AI-assisted workflows.
This trend has continued in full steam into 2026. To better understand it, the team at RationalFX investigated the wave of layoffs in the technology sector, analysing the number of job cuts that have occurred throughout 2026. Based on figures from several sources, including TrueUp, TechCrunch, and multiple state WARN databases, we identified the companies with the most significant workforce reductions since the start of the year.
The Countries Most Affected By Tech Layoffs
In just over a month since the start of the year, tech companies have announced 30,700 job cuts worldwide, with 24,600, just over 80%, occurring in the United States. These reductions span 38 U.S.-based companies, with the largest cuts coming from e‑commerce and technology giant Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and fintech and payments provider Block. An unusual addition to North America’s 2026 layoff landscape is the 60 roles cut at the British Virgin Islands‑based blockchain platform Polygon, placing the small archipelago among the global top ten countries for tech layoffs so far this year.
Across Europe, Sweden leads in job losses after networking and telecommunications firm Ericsson announced 1,900 layoffs. The Netherlands follows closely, not only as Europe’s second-most affected country but also globally, with semiconductor equipment provider ASML cutting 1,700 positions in the northwestern European nation.
In Asia, India tops the list, with a total of 900 jobs cut since the start of the year, followed by Israel, where tech companies have announced 774 layoffs. Despite both nations ranking in the top ten most affected countries for layoffs in 2025, other major hubs such as Japan, Indonesia, and China have reported no layoffs so far this year, though it should be noted that reporting from China is often limited and difficult to verify.
Amazon Leads Tech Layoffs By a Huge Margin
After cutting nearly 20,000 roles in 2025, the second-largest total among tech companies that year, the e-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon has announced a further 16,000 job reductions in 2026, one of the largest single workforce cuts in its history, following 14,000 redundancies in October 2025. Company management cited efforts to streamline reporting, accelerate decisions, and boost efficiency. Yet these cuts come amid record revenues of $716.9 billion in 2025 (up 12% year-on-year, with explosive AWS growth) and massive ongoing investments in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure, including a projected $200 billion in capital expenditure for 2026 alone.
Sweden-based telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson has moved forward with a significant workforce reduction in early 2026, announcing plans to cut approximately 1,900 jobs, the bulk of which stem from a proposed reduction of around 1,600 positions in its home market as part of broader cost-efficiency measures. The company, which said it had begun formal consultations with Swedish trade unions and notified the Swedish Public Employment Service, framed the cuts as necessary to strengthen its competitive position amid a sluggish global 5G market and intensifying industry competition.
Dutch semiconductor parts maker ASML announced plans to cut around 1,700 jobs in early 2026, even as it rode a wave of strong demand for advanced chipmaking systems and reported record sales and profits in 2025. The reductions, roughly 4% of its global workforce, are focused primarily on management, technology, and IT roles in the Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, the United States, and are part of a broader effort to simplify the company’s organisational structure and sharpen its engineering focus.
Social media and technology giant Meta cut approximately 1,500 jobs in early 2026, affecting 10% of its Reality Labs division, the unit tasked with building virtual reality headsets, Horizon Worlds, and other metaverse‑related projects. This is the first major workforce reduction at Meta this year and comes as the company pivots away from costly metaverse investments toward higher‑priority areas like artificial intelligence, following years of heavy losses in Reality Labs. Meta executives, including CTO Andrew Bosworth, have framed the layoffs as part of a broader effort to streamline operations and reallocate capital to products with stronger market traction, even as the company continues to back long‑term augmented‑reality ambitions.
Fintech firm Block Inc., the parent company of payment platforms like Square and Cash App, announced plans to cut about 1,100 jobs in early 2026, representing roughly 10% of its global workforce as part of a broader restructuring push. Led by co‑founder Jack Dorsey, the company says the reductions, tied to annual performance reviews and strategic realignment, are intended to flatten management layers, eliminate overlapping roles, and improve operational efficiency as it continues to integrate its core services and invest in emerging areas such as Bitcoin‑related products and internal AI tools. This marks Block’s third major round of job cuts in recent years, following roughly 931 redundancies in 2025 and a similar reduction in 2024, highlighting the company’s continued drive to reduce costs as competition in the industry intensifies.
Design software leader Autodesk and cloud‑computing giant Salesforce have each announced layoffs of roughly 1,000 employees in early 2026, reflecting a broader trend of strategic workforce realignment across enterprise software. Autodesk, based in San Rafael, California, is trimming roles primarily in product development and corporate functions to streamline operations and accelerate investment in its cloud-based design platforms, while Salesforce is reducing headcount in a mix of sales, marketing, and support roles as part of an effort to simplify its organisational structure and improve operational efficiency following rapid pandemic-era growth. Together, these reductions highlight how even established software leaders are balancing continued investment in high-demand products with the need to control costs and maintain profitability in a challenging enterprise technology landscape.
Washington Surpasses California as the Epicentre of Global Workforce Reductions in 2026
In 2026, several U.S. cities stand out as the headquarters of the largest contributors to global tech layoffs. Seattle, home to technology giants Amazon and Microsoft, tops the list with 16,590 employees affected worldwide, followed by San Francisco, with 4,446 layoffs, and Menlo Park, home to Meta Platforms, with 1,500 reductions.
In Europe, the pattern is similar. Stockholm, where Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson is based, saw 1,900 employees affected worldwide, while Veldhoven, home to semiconductor equipment maker ASML, accounted for 1,700 layoffs. These figures demonstrate that even when the absolute scale of layoffs is smaller than in the U.S., company restructuring and optimisation efforts affect other regions similarly harshly.
The State of the Tech Industry in Early 2026
The tech sector continues to navigate the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted more than a million tech employees around the world since 2021. The first month of 2026 has already seen a surge in layoffs, and based on current trends, if job cuts continue at the same intensity, total reductions could reach 273,305 by year-end, surpassing 2025’s 245,000 layoffs.
Last year’s mass redundancies were largely driven by automation, AI‑driven job displacement, and broader cost‑cutting strategies. While roles most easily replaced by automation were initially the first to go, recent rounds of cuts, including at Microsoft, which eliminated 6,000 positions, among them a senior AI director, show that even high-level roles are no longer immune.
Employers are now placing increasing emphasis on AI expertise as a core requirement when evaluating candidates. Historically, companies have attempted to mitigate layoffs through reskilling and redeployment, but some executives, such as TCS’s K. Krithivasan, argue that simply moving employees into new positions is not a sustainable solution. The coming months will reveal whether tech firms in 2026 continue to prioritise cost-cutting and downsizing, or if the rise of AI and related technologies will drive the creation of new roles across the industry.
Methodology
For this report, the team at RationalFX examined all of the reported tech company layoffs since the beginning of 2025, sourced from the IT job portal TrueUp.io. We also searched through additional sources, including TechCrunch, Layoffs.fyi, and several WARN databases. These are publicly available announcements providing advance notice in cases of qualified plant closings and mass layoffs as required by the U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.
Layoff figures were first aggregated at the company level to determine the total job cuts per firm. Next, companies were classified by their country of headquarters, providing insight into the geographic distribution of layoffs. To highlight the most significant workforce reductions, firms were ranked by the number of jobs eliminated, while countries were ranked based on the total layoffs reported by companies operating within them.