The more than 20,000 potential job cuts Meta and Microsoft revealed on Thursday, months after Amazon announced its most widespread layoffs ever, may only be the beginning.

The same companies that are collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure to meet soaring demand for AI services are seeking efficiencies from AI by slashing head count. They’re also still trying to rightsize from the pandemic-fueled overhiring.

Many economists and industry experts are fearful that a labor crisis may be upon us today — not coming sometime in the future — given how quickly AI is sweeping across corporate America. As of this week, over 92,000 tech workers have been laid off so far in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, bringing the total to almost 900,000 since 2020

“This represents a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction,” said Anthony Tuggle, an executive coach and leadership expert who previously worked in AI. “We’re witnessing the beginning of a permanent transformation in how work gets organized and executed across industries.”

Job anxiety has been on the rise since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, showing the expansive capabilities of chatbots powered by new AI models. Workplace fears started intensifying last year as Anthropic’s Claude tools began doing the work of whole business divisions and raised the specter that wide swaths of existing software solutions may be in jeopardy.

Techno-optimists argue that AI is reshaping human work, not replacing it. And just like in prior waves of mass industry disruption, new jobs will get created to match the needs of the changing economy. Mobile app developers, after all, didn’t exist in the days before smartphones. And what use were IT administrators before we created servers?

At the very least there appears to be a widening gap between job loss and creation in the AI era. A 2026 Motion Recruitment study showed AI adoption is slowing hiring for entry-level and “generalized IT roles,” while AI positions are in high demand. Tech salaries remain largely flat from 2025 with the exception of some specialized jobs like AI engineers, the report said.

Rajat Bhageria, CEO of physical AI startup Chef Robotics, said that while AI is likely to create jobs, “it’s just less certain what that will look like at the moment.”

“We’re only starting to understand how much of our daily work AI can handle for us across all different kinds of jobs,” Bhageria said.

Meta only hinted at AI in its announcement on Thursday. The company told employees in a memo that it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, with cuts beginning on May 20, “all part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” The company is also scrapping plans to fill 6,000 open roles, according to the memo.

Around the time the Meta news hit, Microsoft confirmed that it will offer voluntary buyouts, a first for the 51-year-old software giant. About 7% of U.S. employees are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the number isn’t being made public. With about 125,000 U.S. employees, that could add up to 8,750 cuts.

Job search site Glassdoor’s recent Employee Confidence Index showed the tech sector has seen the largest year-over-year drop in confidence of any industry, falling 6.8 percentage points in March from a year earlier to 47.2%.

Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, said fewer people are quitting their jobs, fearing an unstable market, a dynamic that comes at a cost to employee morale and career satisfaction. It also means even more job cuts.

“Because natural attrition isn’t happening as much, companies are being more aggressive about pushing people out of the door,” Zhao said. “Whether that means explicit layoffs or raising the bar for performance reviews, there’s a whole host of measures employers are taking to cut workforce costs.”

Snap said last month it would slash 16% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 staffers, and that at least 300 open positions would be closed. CEO Evan Spiegel cited AI-driven efficiencies in a letter to staff. Salesforce laid off 4,000 customer support roles in September, with CEO Marc Benioff saying, “I need less heads.”

Oracle said in March that it was laying off thousands of employees as it ramps up AI spending. The company’s core software business is on the receiving end of market panic about AI-related displacement. Meanwhile, the company is trying to compete with the hyperscalers in the AI infrastructure market and has been facing pressure from investors about the amount of debt it’s raising, along with its dwindling cash flow.

Eliminating 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could result in $8 billion to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow for Oracle, TD Cowen analysts wrote in a January note.

Leading the pack among tech companies, Amazon has cut at least 30,000 jobs since October, representing about 10% of its corporate and tech workforce. Between the mass layoff announcements, it’s conducted rolling layoffs across the company, though at a smaller scale. Google has also carried out small but regular cuts since 2023.

But the spending continues.

Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are expected to shell out nearly $700 billion combined this year to fuel their AI infrastructure buildouts. The companies are all scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday, and can expect questions from analysts about updated plans for spending as well as future layoffs.

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran said Friday that the weak February jobs report bolsters the rationale for the central bank to lower interest rates further.

Responding to the drop of 92,000 in nonfarm payrolls that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, Miran said in a CNBC interview that the Fed should be focusing more on supporting the labor market than worrying about inflation.

“I think that we don’t have an inflation problem,” he said on the “Money Movers” show. “I think that the labor market can use more accommodation from monetary policy. And I don’t see having a modestly restrictive stance of monetary policy as opposed to a neutral stance as being appropriate. I think being close to neutral is appropriate.”

Currently, the Fed’s key interest rate is targeted in a range between 3.5% to 3.75%, following three consecutive quarter percentage point cuts in the latter part of 2025.

If Miran had his way, the rate would be around neutral, which he deems to be about a full percentage point lower. The consensus of Fed officials at the December meeting was that neutral — a level neither holds back nor boosts the economy — is around 3.1%, implying two more cuts.

Miran has been arguing that stubbornly high inflation numbers are more a function of how it is measured by the Commerce and Labor departments rather than true underlying pressures.

One factor he cited was portfolio management fees, which have risen amid a generally higher stock market. Portfolio management fees are often charged as a percentage of assets, so when markets rise the dollar value of those fees increases even though the underlying rate for those services does not.

The recent surge in oil prices and corresponding boost for costs at the pump related to the Iran war are less of a concern, Miran added.

“Typically, the Federal Reserve doesn’t respond to higher oil prices like that. It [boosts] headline inflation, but it tends to be a one-off shock,” he said. “When you think about core inflation [which does not include energy prices], it tends to be more predictive of where inflation is going over the medium term than headline inflation.”

Miran has dissented at each of the Federal Open Market Committee meetings he has attended since September, after President Donald Trump nominated him as a governor. For the three rate cuts, he preferred more aggressive half percentage point reductions to the quarter-point moves the committee approved. In January, when the FOMC voted not to cut, Miran said he wanted a quarter-point reduction.

Asked if he would dissent again, he said, “I hope not, but that would be up to my colleagues. I hope that we vote to cut.”

Miran was appointed to full the unexpired term of Adriana Kugler, who resigned in August 2025. That term expired in January, but Miran has continued to serve until a successor is approved. Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to a position that ultimately will be a replacement for current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May.

“I will be at the meeting in a couple weeks, and after that I will take it a day at a time,” Miran said.

The Warner Bros. Discovery board may have enriched its shareholders Thursday when it chose Paramount Skydance‘s acquisition offer over Netflix‘s, but it also terrified a lot of its employees.

While some of those people own WBD shares and may prefer the financials of Paramount’s $31-per-share bid to Netflix’s $27.75-per-share offer, CNBC spoke to 10 WBD employees in a variety of different roles at the company. All 10, who asked not to be named for fear of potential backlash, expressed concerns about potential job losses and questions of who would ultimately run their divisions if Paramount and WBD are eventually merged.

“It’s fair to say people are deflated by the news,” said one long-term WBD executive.

Nonetheless, a WBD-Paramount merger “is not a done deal,” as California Attorney General Rob Bonta said yesterday.

The transaction must gain regulatory approval both in the U.S. and in Europe. WBD CEO David Zaslav acknowledged at an all-hands meeting Friday that the deal may still be blocked and expressed sympathy for those experiencing a sense of whiplash going from Netflix to Paramount, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The deal may not close. If it doesn’t close, we get $7 billion, and we get back to work,” Zaslav said, according to leaked audio provided to Business Insider.

Still, several WBD employees told CNBC they wished Netflix had acquired WBD, citing several factors.

While Paramount and WBD both have core competencies in news, sports, theatrical film and streaming TV, Netflix has far less overlap. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos repeatedly said he planned to leave the WBD business alone, keeping its theatrical business separate from Netflix while also keeping HBO Max as a separate, independent streaming service for the foreseeable future.

Netflix also wasn’t acquiring WBD’s linear cable business with its bid. Employees at CNN, TNT Sports and the old Discovery networks would have remained in their jobs to forge a path as a standalone publicly traded company.

Now, WBD employees are staring at potentially massive job cuts. Paramount executives have previously stated they plan to cut $6 billion by eliminating “duplicative operations” on “back office, finance, corporate, legal, technology, infrastructure, et cetera,” according to Chief Strategy Officer Andy Gordon. Both WBD and Paramount have already gone through thousands of job cuts in recent years.

There are also questions about culture and leadership. While Mark Thompson currently runs CNN, Bari Weiss is the editor-in-chief at CBS News and could plausibly have CNN added to her purview.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Paramount CEO David Ellison promised President Donald Trump he’d make sweeping changes at CNN if he gained control of the network. Three CNN employees who spoke with CNBC said there’s rampant fear among their colleagues about Weiss making dramatic changes to the cable network’s anchors and tone.

“Despite all the speculation you’ve read during this process, I’d suggest that you don’t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more,” Thompson wrote in a memo to employees Thursday.

CNN media reporter Brian Stelter noted CNN “is a highly profitable business, and it would be foolish for any owner to put that at risk.”

On the entertainment side, WBD employees fear there may be too many proverbial cooks in the kitchen, which could bog down creativity and innovation for both film and TV.

One WBD executive noted that Paramount’s President Jeff Shell, Chair of Direct to Consumer Cindy Holland and Chair of TV George Cheeks are all used to being senior leaders in their organizations. Shell was CEO of NBCUniversal. Cheeks was co-CEO of Paramount before it merged with Skydance. Holland was a top executive at Netflix, where she worked for 18 years.

How that mix meshes with WBD’s entertainment leadership group is an open question and could lead to culture clashes.

TNT Sports is run by Luis Silberwasser and has largely steered WBD toward younger audiences with its programming decisions and investments, including Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. CBS Sports, meanwhile, is driven by the demographics of those who watch CBS and has historically catered to an older audience. This could lead to culture clash, or the divisions could mesh nicely as complementary assets.

While Silberwasser will have to work with CBS Sports President David Berson on employee duplications, like every other department, there’s some reason for optimism in the sports division, because WBD and CBS have worked together for many years producing March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. That’s given the units some degree of familiarity with each other.

WBD also lost NBA rights last season. Combining with CBS’ robust portfolio of sports rights, including the NFL and the Masters, makes WBD a major player again in sports, even if it’s as a subsidiary of CBS.

One other repeated concern among employees is the $64 billion in debt coming as part of the $111 billion enterprise value for the deal. Several employees said servicing large debt loads has hindered WBD in recent years, and they feared this could lead to more of the same. Two employees noted there’s comfort being a part of a giant company like Netflix, with a market capitalization of more than $400 billion. Paramount Skydance’s market valuation is just $15 billion.

Digital asset infrastructure company Fireblocks said it has disrupted a North Korea-linked job recruitment impersonation scam that was targeting digital assets.

Fireblocks said hackers used fake job interviews to compromise developers and gain access to crypto infrastructure.

According to the firm, the hackers were able to closely resemble a legitimate Fireblocks hiring process and impersonate recruiters, conduct Google Meet interviews and share take-home assignments via GitHub.

“What they’re basically doing is that they are weaponizing a legit interview … to create a very legit and authentic interaction with candidates,” Michael Shaulov, the CEO of Fireblocks, told CNBC.

When candidates ran a routine installation, malware was actually installed, which could expose wallets, keys and production systems.

Shaulov said the group was targeting engineers based on their LinkedIn profiles, looking for people with “privileged access.”

He said that the firm identified almost a dozen fake profiles that were continuously changing their company brands, and that they believe this scam has been active for the past few years.

“We were able to basically interact with the hackers and basically collect what we call ‘indication of compromise,’ but essentially kind of like the fingerprints of the tools and the weaponry and the malware that they were using in that campaign,” Shaulov said.

Fireblocks worked with LinkedIn and law enforcement to get the profiles taken down, he added.

“Over 99% of the fake accounts we remove are detected proactively before anyone reports them,” a LinkedIn spokesperson said in a statement.

The social media platform targeted to professionals said it is constantly investing in technology to detect “harmful behavior” and has guardrail procedures in place, like in-message warnings when chats move off of LinkedIn and verification badges for recruiters.

Last year, Bybit experienced the largest crypto heist in history when hackers stole $1.5 billion in digital assets from the cryptocurrency exchange.

Analysts at blockchain analysis firm Elliptic linked the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, a state-sponsored hacking collective notorious for siphoning billions of dollars from the crypto industry.

The Lazarus Group’s history of targeting crypto platforms dates back to 2017, when the group infiltrated four South Korean exchanges and stole $200 million worth of bitcoin.

Shaulov, who helped investigate Lazarus Group’s 2017 attacks on crypto platforms, said hackers, especially those tied to North Korea, have been evolving at “light speed.”

He said in 2017 and 2018, “it was actually quite easy” to identify them because of grammar mistakes and typos. But now, “it looks like they graduated from [The University of] Oxford.”

“It’s clear that the attackers have become way more sophisticated and way harder to detect because of AI,” Shaulov said.

If there is still no clear answer to the question of how artificial intelligence is influencing gains and losses in the job market, there is at least one AI question that job candidates, and current workers hoping to keep their roles, should be prepared to answer clearly in 2026.

“In many roles, the baseline will no longer be ‘Can a person do the job?’ but rather ‘Can they do it in a way that adds unique value beyond what AI can do alone, and what people can do alone?'” said Daniela Rus, director of the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The evolving relationship between AI and human work is a critical issue in the labor market with the technology’s payoff beginning to show up in productivity data, at least anecdotally. Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said that artificial intelligence is causing big companies to slow hiring, and that many businesses are seeing “real productivity gains.”

Kashkari told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the impact remains mostly at large firms, and overall he expects continued low hiring and low firing in the labor market. But he added, “There are too many anecdotes of businesses using this and actually seeing real productivity gains. Businesses that I talked to that two years ago were skeptical are saying, ‘No, we’re actually using it now.'”

“I would say that we’re actually not hiring fewer people,” AMD CEO Lis Su told CNBC’s Jon Fortt from the CES conference in Las Vegas. “Frankly, we’re growing very significantly as a company, so we actually are hiring lots of people, but we’re hiring different people. We’re hiring people who are AI forward.”

Last year, CEOs at Shopify, Accenture, and Fiverr were among examples of business leaders overseeing layoffs while also urging employees to upskill or face the prospect of finding themselves less relevant in the workforce. 

Micha Kaufman, CEO of Fiverr, said when he encouraged teams to “deepen their AI skills, it was not a symbolic gesture. It was a recognition of where the world of work is moving. AI is reshaping every industry, and the most responsible thing any company can do is prepare its people for that change early, transparently, and with purpose.”

Some of the ways that corporations are talking about this shift remain vague, for example, AI handling repetitive or computationally heavy tasks so humans can focus on higher-order tasks involving judgment, empathy, creativity, and context. This vision of human work improved by AI, with the technology in the background, represents “a move from replacement to augmentation,” according to Rus. 

But workers would be right to be skeptical.

“These transitions are about efficiency, but also about trust and transparency: workers will need to trust that companies aren’t simply using AI as cover for cost-cutting,” said Rus. She added that there is a risk that rather than amplifying uniquely human skills, the AI transition erodes them.

Kaufman acknowledged transparency from executives can’t eliminate worker anxiety. “By learning to use AI, people might fear they’re training the tools that replace them,” he said. “But I see something very different happening. The individuals who learn to guide AI, to interpret and improve its outputs, are not training their replacements; they are becoming the architects of the next generation of work,” he said.

Fiverr, which offers a platform connecting employers to freelance workers, is on the frontlines of AI adoption since it facilitates work where AI use is rising. According to its 2024 Freelance Economic Impact Report, 40% of freelancers were already using AI tools, usage that Kaufman said was saving on average more than eight hours a week. Its research found that early adopters are delivering better work, and being more highly compensated. “Those who have learned to integrate AI are not being replaced by it; they are thriving because of it,” he said.

A recent study from The Budget Lab at Yale provides some encouragement that the relationship between AI and jobs is so far not all that different from past periods of technological advancement. It concluded that the broader labor market has not been disrupted in the period since ChatGPT’s late 2022 release, and that the available data indicates that AI automation is not eroding the demand for knowledge-based labor across the economy.

The Budget Lab researchers cautioned that no findings can be deemed conclusive in the first few years of a new technology’s deployment, but they pointed to historical precedents, such as the introduction of the computer to offices, that show “widespread technological disruption in workplaces tends to occur over decades, rather than months or years.”

“Even if new AI technologies will go on to impact the labor market as much, or more, dramatically, it is reasonable to expect that widespread effects will take longer to materialize,” the Yale report stated.

A recent McKinsey study forecasted that AI could “theoretically” automate more than half of current U.S. work hours, but added that this view does not necessarily mean job losses. “Some roles will shrink, others grow or shift, while new ones emerge — with work increasingly centered on collaboration between humans and intelligent machines,” its authors wrote.

McKinsey estimates that 70% of desired skills in the job market are applicable to both automatable and non-automatable work. “This overlap means most skills remain relevant, but how and where they are used will evolve,” its researchers wrote.

Companies that heavily lean into AI as a hiring replacement early on may also recalibrate based on experience.

Armando Solar-Lezama, professor of computing at MIT and an associate director at MIT CSAIL, pointed to the example of fintech Klarna, which fired 40% of its workforce in an AI-first policy shift only to have to rehire many workers in customer service after lower-quality performance from the technology. “Some of those efforts are likely to end up backfiring,” Solar-Lezama said. But the individual corporate AI fails should not provide too much comfort to workers across the economy. “Many will succeed and lead to workforce reductions,” he said.

For any workers who currently fear they are being tasked by their employers with training their robot replacements, Solar-Lezama said it is the organizations that may pay the biggest price. Human failure on the job, in fact, remains something of an irreplaceable skill in the workplace itself.

“It is important to note that AI systems do not learn in the same way that people do,” he said. “Existing organizations are set up to deal with the failure modes of humans, so they will fail if you just replace those humans with AI systems. It will take time for companies to figure out,” he added.