From Silicon Valley to the giants of finance and industry, the year 2026 is chaining waves of job cuts at an unprecedented pace since the 2009 crisis. Behind the numbers, a question that worries: is artificial intelligence redefining, for good, what it means to “need employees”?
Something has changed in the world of work around 2026. Not only the scale of layoffs — which is substantial — but their logic.
For the first time at this scale, healthy companies, sometimes enjoying rising profits, are cutting thousands of jobs not to survive, but to reorganize around artificial intelligence. A survey of a sequence that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of victims.
The case that crystallized everything: Block
On February 26, 2026, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and head of Block (Square, Cash App), announces the elimination of more than 40% of the group’s workforce. The company goes from over 10,000 to under 6,000 employees — and the decision has nothing to do with financial difficulties: Block had just announced quarterly gross profit of $2.87 billion, up 26% year over year. The stated motive is AI. In a letter to shareholders, Dorsey says that a significantly smaller team, equipped with the right tools, can do more and better, and warns that “most companies are behind” on this awareness.
The market reaction was the real shock: the stock jumped more than 20% before the open, investors applauding the promise of efficiency. Several media outlets described the move as the largest AI-linked layoff in recent history. A CEO fires half his troops, and his valuation climbs: no episode better captures the era’s anxiety.
The giants by volume: Amazon and UPS
If Block hits by proportion, others hit by sheer numbers. Amazon confirmed about 16,000 job cuts in 2026, after a first wave in autumn 2025, bringing the total to almost 30,000 administrative roles.
The logistics company UPS does even more spectacularly: it plans to eliminate up to 30,000 operational positions in 2026, after already 48,000 cuts in 2025 and the closure of 93 sites. Here, it is not so much AI as logistical automation and a redesign of the delivery model.
The tech, in the name of AI
The first half of 2026 saw a stream of announcements, with a recurring argument: funding AI by lightening the payroll. Dell cut its workforce by 11,000 people (about 10%), Atlassian cut 1,600 on March 11 citing an AI-driven reorganization, while Meta launched on March 25 a new wave hitting Reality Labs, hiring, and sales. Mark Zuckerberg presented to his teams the roughly 8,000 job cuts at Meta as a direct consequence of his investments in AI infrastructure. Pinterest announced cutting about 15% of its workforce, and Coinbase 14%, its CEO explaining that engineers deliver in a few days, thanks to AI, what would take weeks for a team.
The movement extends far beyond Silicon Valley. In finance, Morgan Stanley eliminated about 2,500 jobs (3% of its workforce), while Citi pursues a plan potentially reaching 20,000 cuts and Mastercard announced 1,400 fewer positions, despite solid profits. In industry and consumer goods, the chemical Dow eliminates 4,500 positions, the brewer Heineken up to 6,000, and Nike 1,400 more. Takeda labs expect 4,500 cuts, and insurer Ageas plans to cut nearly half its workforce after acquisitions.
The shock in the media
The information sector is not spared. The Washington Post announced in February the layoff of one third of its staff, in the newsroom as in other departments — a bloodletting of unusual scale for a newspaper of this stature, symbolizing the structural difficulties facing the press.
The big question: AI, real engine or alibi?
This is the core debate, and the May 2026 data place it at the center. Artificial intelligence was the most cited reason for layoffs, across all sectors, for the third consecutive month: 40% of May cuts, up from 7% in January to 26% in April.
By the end of May, 87,714 job cuts had been officially attributed to AI in the United States since the start of the year, compared with 54,836 for all of 2025.
But attributing a cut to AI in a release does not prove that the technology actually replaced the workers concerned. Challenger, the firm itself, notes that this is not yet the “employment apocalypse” that some predicted. And dissenting voices come from within the sector itself: OpenAI’s boss Sam Altman accused companies of doing “AI-washing,” i.e., attributing to AI decisions dictated by other factors; Apollo’s chief economist Torsten Sløk says he sees “no evidence” of job losses due to AI.
Altman even went as far as to admit he had been “wrong,” having anticipated far more office job destruction than he has actually observed so far. In other words: AI has become the most convenient explanation, as well as an actual driver.
Why this matters to us too
For Tunisia, the signal deserves close watching. Part of its digital economy relies on outsourcing IT, administrative, and support functions for European companies.
If big groups sustainably reduce the number of employees required to perform these tasks, offshore countries could be exposed in turn.
Nothing has yet been measured on the Tunisian side — but the 2026 wave looks like a dress rehearsal, and it would be unwise to view it as a purely American affair.
The Great Downsizing of 2026
Overview of the main waves of layoffs
