2026년 1분기 기술업계 8만 명 해고, 약 50%가 AI 탓

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Subscribe to our newsletter 78,557 workers in the tech industry have reportedly been laid off from January 1 to April 2026, with more than 76% of the affected positions located in the U.S. Nikkei Asia reports that 37,638 of these cuts, or 47.9%, have been attributed to the reduced need for human workers because of AI and workflow automation. Despite that, Cognizant Chief AI Officer Babak Hodjat says that it will still take more than a year before we completely see the impact of modern AI technologies on the workforce. “I don’t know if they are directly related to actual productivity gains,” Hodjat told Nikkei in reference to the job cuts. “Sometimes, you know, AI becomes the scapegoat from a financial perspective, like when a company hired too many, or they want to resize, and it gets blamed on AI.” Despite that, he said that AI-driven layoffs could still happen, but that it would take another six months to a year “before companies start seeing real productivity gains from AI,” and that “it will be painful for all of us as we’re going through it, and simply because it’s a transition.” This does not bode well for the industry, which has already been reeling from layoffs. Oracle has quietly cut more than 10,000 positions recently, with the savings purportedly allocated to data center funding. Many institutions and industry leaders have already been warning about AI-driven layoffs, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Ford CEO Jim Farley saying that the technology will wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs in the U.S. A Stanford study saw many entry-level coding and customer service jobs are already being affected , with an MIT simulation showing that AI can replace nearly 12% of the U.S. workforce, amounting to nearly $1.2 trillion in lost salaries . Article continues below Despite all these analyses, some experts are pushing back against this narrative, pointing out that AI-driven layoffs were just being used as an excuse for poor business performance . OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during the India AI Impact Summit , “I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs.” While they say that some of these layoffs would still happen with or without AI, there’s still a consensus that the technology would have an impact on jobs and that we should be ready for a disruption. Still, there are a few companies that are bucking the trend. IBM has reportedly tripled its entry-level hiring in 2026, saying that while AI can do many entry-level jobs, it still needs a human touch. Furthermore, while cutting entry-level jobs would deliver short-term savings for any organization, it comes with the risk of erasing the pipeline needed to train future experienced workers and mid-level managers. This is backed up by data from the EU, which showed that companies that deployed and invested in AI are likely to hire more people . Even Cognizant, whose business process outsourcing operations rely mostly on people, have started working on AI technologies. It built AI labs in San Francisco and Bengaluru and have started developing custom AI agents for its clients, especially as many of them found that off-the-shelf services do not work well in the corporate setting due to performance or security issues. Despite the development of more capable and suitable AI agents, Hodjat said that the company does not expect to lay off staff. Instead, it will train them in the use of these tools, and there are even plans to hire more junior roles. "There's going to be a ton of people that are coming out of school that can't find a job and don't have the domain expertise,” Hodjat told Nikkei . “You have to bring them in. You have to have them learn on the job, on how to use AI within the various domains.” Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. See all comments (8) Jowi Morales Contributing Writer Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. 8 Comments Comment from the forums I mean... This: "Some experts argue that AI was just used as an excuse for poor business decisions". You can simply reduce that to: "shareholder grunts for more money and exec made bad decisions, then sacrifice the lower levels until neck can't be saved". Even then, they still get golden parachutes. It's the history of humanity. Some people use Iwata as the golden standard, but... That was mostly due to Japanese law being very clear on how lay offs should be handled, which, to my memory, is rather unique to them. Yes, it was a nice gesture, but not as selfless as many want to portray it as. Regardless, what is the "normal" here? Against what number does this need to be compared? It's a high number, but given the size of the IT employee pool around the world, not sure how it compared to "normal" movement? I didn't see it mentioned in the article/news. I hope I'm not that blind. Regards. Reply I hope that the programmers who went along with creating their own AI replacements are the first to get fired. We know why the big wigs and power brokers want AI. Why did those at the bottom agree? No love. I got no love. People want to make their beds then complain that that's the bed the gotta sleep in. Well you did it!! What the heck. It's like who are the programmers who programmed in Google's spyware? Who are the programmers who programmed in Microsoft's spyware? Meta's spyware? Etc etc. Well if you are the programmer who created the spyware, you got no room to complain about your loss of security and confidentiality. None at all. Go eat your pizza, you baked the thing then you want to complain. Reply Many who are not in the theme would be very surprized to find that in almost 100% cases the news about layoffs are met with the rise of stock prices by the respective shareholders. Hence be prepared: when AI reach the AGI nothing will stop the CEO at the request of shareholders to fire even the last employee. Reply 2027 80,000 people rehired after ai botches something to stupid lol. Reply It's all AI washing. Executives can do lay offs while claiming productivity increase to boost stock price. Reply ezst036 said: I hope that the programmers who went along with creating their own AI replacements are the first to get fired. We know why the big wigs and power brokers want AI. Why did those at the bottom agree? No love. I got no love. People want to make their beds then complain that that's the bed the gotta sleep in. Well you did it!! What the heck. It's like who are the programmers who programmed in Google's spyware? Who are the programmers who programmed in Microsoft's sp