Tech Layoffs 2026: Amex Joins Meta and Amazon in AI-Era Job Cuts

A late-October wave lands on a heavy year

In the last full week of October, two very different companies added to the year's layoff count. On its third-quarter earnings call, American Express said it would cut about 5% of its global workforce and booked a $336 million restructuring charge11. Netflix, eBay and Electronic Arts had already announced their own cuts earlier in the month3. For workers, the timing is the point. A cycle that began with Amazon's huge January announcement is still running in the fourth quarter. It has also moved past software companies into payments, retail, banking and consumer goods.

More than 35 companies have cut staff in 2026. They include Meta, Walmart, Amazon and American Express, and AI and economic conditions are the two forces most often blamed11. Read together, the coverage points to one conclusion. The common thread is not that AI is directly doing the work of laid-off employees. Companies are paying for very large AI investments partly by shrinking their payrolls.

The American Express numbers, and why they don't quite match

The Amex announcement shows how even one company's layoff figure can vary between outlets. Bloomberg reported that CEO Stephen Squeri gave the company's headcount as 78,000, which would put the cut at about 3,500 jobs20. Business Insider used a year-end 2025 figure of about 77,000 and estimated 3,000 to 4,000 affected employees11. The Epoch Times rounded to about 4,000 positions17. Market commentators listed a precise 3,84016. Each figure is a calculation based on a percentage, not a confirmed count of people let go.

The reason given also differs by outlet. Bloomberg linked the cuts to Squeri's effort to control rising costs while transaction volumes came in below expectations20. Business Insider highlighted executives' comments about AI changing the company's internal structure11. The financial results complicate the cost argument. Amex beat Wall Street's earnings estimate with $4.68 per share in adjusted earnings and raised its full-year 2026 profit guidance17. A profitable company cutting staff on the same call where it raises its forecast has become a familiar pattern this year.

Amex was also not the only financial firm to act that week. Barclays said it would cut 5,000 jobs, about 5% of its staff, and pointed to AI-driven changes17. Most of those cuts will hit developer and support roles, mainly in its UK retail bank, which includes a large team in India10. Barclays also pledged £150 million by 2030 to retrain employees in AI skills10.

Amazon and Meta set the scale

In raw numbers, Amazon remains the biggest story of the year. In January it confirmed 16,000 corporate job cuts, completing a plan of roughly 30,000 cuts that began in October 2025 and leaving the door open to more21. CNBC reported that the 30,000 figure equals about 10% of Amazon's roughly 350,000 corporate and tech staff25. Most affected employees had 90 days to find another internal role before receiving severance24.

Smaller rounds kept coming after that. They hit the Selling Partner Services team in May11, parts of the artificial general intelligence unit in July12, and fewer than 1,000 white-collar workers in the Stores division in early October, across the U.S., India and the U.K.1. A worker in the AGI unit summed up the irony online: her job had been choosing which data points mattered for AI pretraining, and she was the one filtered out.

Amazon's explanations have changed over time, and that matters. In January, the company spoke of removing layers and bureaucracy24. Reuters noted that when Amazon announced the October 2025 round, it blamed AI and concerns about corporate culture21. More recently, founder Jeff Bezos told Fox News that the ongoing cuts reflect overhiring during the pandemic4. The New York Times placed the cuts next to Amazon's heavy spending on data centers and noted that business was booming27. These accounts do not contradict each other, but how much weight Amazon gives each one depends on who it is speaking to.

Meta's year followed a similar path. Around 700 employees in Reality Labs, social media and recruiting were laid off in March. That was far fewer than an earlier Reuters report suggesting up to 20% of staff could go12. In May, Meta began cutting about 10% of its workforce, roughly 8,000 people, and closed 6,000 open positions to free up money for AI12. Meta also planned to move thousands of employees into AI projects and remove management layers18. TechRepublic described the result as a company increasing spending on new technology while cutting staff elsewhere in the business14.

Oracle's numbers are less clear. Its annual filing showed headcount falling from about 162,000 to 141,000, a 13% drop of roughly 21,000 employees18. Other accounts put Oracle's 2026 reductions as high as 30,00019. The GoLayoffs tracker records only 2,039 workers affected through documented notices and treats the larger estimates as unconfirmed14. The 21,000 figure from the filing is the most solid of these, and the filing also counts attrition along with layoffs.

How many workers? The trackers disagree widely

Anyone hoping for a single total will be disappointed. TrueUp counted 196,349 people affected by tech-company layoffs as of October 233. Layoffs.fyi counted 134,917 tech employees at 328 companies as of October 21, already more than its total for all of 20256. Challenger, Gray and Christmas tallied 165,925 announced U.S. tech job cuts from January through September, up 54% from a year earlier and 29% of all announced cuts6. GoLayoffs recorded about 65,0003. Another tracker reported 232,9468.

These gaps come from definitions, not mistakes. Some trackers count announcements and others count completed layoffs. Some include non-technical staff at tech firms, and some count only U.S. employers36. Government data looks calmer. U.S. layoffs and discharges were roughly flat at 1.6 million in August, and the Information industry accounted for 28,000 of them6. Overall, 2026 is a bad year for tech workers and worse than 2025. Layoffs.fyi's count is still only about half of its 2023 peak6.

Is AI really the reason?

The coverage disagrees most sharply here. Citing Layoffs.fyi, the Epoch Times reported that 69% of people laid off this year lost their jobs because of AI, up from 29% in 202517. GoLayoffs found that only 17 of 66 tech layoff announcements with a stated reason explicitly mentioned AI. That is about 26% of announcements, not 26% of people3.

The company statements are mixed as well. Block's Jack Dorsey said directly that smaller teams using AI can do more work18. Cloudflare said its AI use had risen more than 600% in three months while it cut about 20% of staff11. Snap said more than 65% of its new code is written with AI tools18. Other companies have gone out of their way to deny an AI link. HubSpot's CEO said the cut of about 660 jobs was not driven by AI efficiencies, even as the company reorganizes around AI4. Etsy's CEO said its 220 cuts were not driven by AI or cost savings18. Walmart pointed to simplifying its organization18.

The more consistent pattern is about where the money goes. Amazon, Meta, Oracle and Microsoft have all restructured while increasing AI investment18. Atlassian said its 1,600 cuts would "self-fund" more investment in AI and enterprise sales12. Oracle's cuts were reportedly meant to slow cash outflows tied to AI infrastructure12. For many of these workers, AI did not take over their tasks. Their salaries were moved into data centers instead.

What workers should take from this

This cycle is not a reaction to a downturn. Many of the companies cutting staff are growing, profitable or both. Amex raised its guidance17. Amazon cut jobs while its revenue was rising23. Netflix's co-CEOs described the business as strong while cutting about 6% of staff3. Hiring is also continuing in narrow specialties. GM said its 600 IT cuts were meant to bring in skills such as AI-native development and prompt engineering11, and Amazon has reportedly approached former staff with machine-learning and infrastructure experience about AI roles26.

The likely result is a split labor market. General corporate, management and support jobs are being cut, while a smaller set of AI-related skills is in high demand. Companies keep announcing cuts in the same earnings calls where they report strong profits, which suggests the cycle will continue into 2027. Workers in roles that look like overhead should plan with that in mind.