The 2026 tech layoff counter reached 60,247 — one in five explicitly attributed to AI automation — and the number keeps climbing.
Bloomberg reported the milestone as a tech industry data point.
X's tech labor community is tracking the AI-attribution rate: 20% of layoffs now explicitly blame AI, up from 12% in January.
The running tech layoff total for 2026 reached 60,247 on Friday, according to Layoffs.fyi — up from 59,821 on Wednesday. Meta's 700-person cut this week was the largest single action. Of the total, approximately 12,049 (20 percent) were explicitly attributed by the laying-off companies to AI or automation replacing the roles. [1]
The AI-attribution rate has risen from 12 percent in January to 20 percent in March. The industry is building the technology that replaces its own workers.
-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing