20,000 job cuts at Meta, Microsoft raise concern that AI-driven labor crisis is here

meta and microsoft together revealed more than 20,000 potential job cuts on thursday — meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce (about 8,000 jobs) starting may 20, and is scrapping plans to fill 6,000 open roles. microsoft confirmed it will offer voluntary buyouts for the first time, with about 7% of its 125,000 us employees eligible — roughly 8,750 cuts. so far in 2026, over 92,000 tech workers have been laid off, bringing the total to almost 900,000 since 2020, per layoffs.fyi. amazon has cut at least 30,000 jobs since october. snap slashed 16% of its workforce last month. salesforce laid off 4,000 customer support roles in september. oracle laid off thousands in march. nike also announced layoffs affecting about 1,400 employees, mostly in its tech department. the same companies are spending nearly $700 billion combined this year on ai infrastructure. venture capitalists say startups are growing faster with far fewer people — a $50 million revenue software business used to need 250 employees; now it can be done with 50. glassdoor's employee confidence index showed tech sector confidence dropped 6.8 percentage points in march year-over-year to 47.2%. chief economist daniel zhao said fewer people are quitting, so companies are being more aggressive about cutting headcount.