Tech companies continued laying off workers last month, with employers in that sector announcing 18,720 job cuts for March.
That's a 24 percent increase over March 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. data reported by Bloomberg.
Overall, more than 52,000 tech jobs have been cut this year, making it the most number of jobs cut in the first quarter of the year since 2023.
Outside of tech, U.S. employers in other industries announced that 60,620 jobs were cut in March, which is a 25 percent increase over February. A quarter of the layoff announcements claimed staff reductions were the result of AI adoption.
AI leaders, tech analysts, and CEOs have warned that AI may lead to significant job losses, especially in white-collar sectors. Amazon, Meta, Oracle, and Block — a fintech company led by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey — have already laid off workers and justified the cuts by pointing to AI.
In 2024, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wrote that he believed AI could completely upend how humans work.
“Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition,” Dimon said at the time. “It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”
More recently, he told CBS News that the tech will cure cancer and allow today's children to work half weeks and live to 100.
But it may not just be AI adoption driving the layoffs at major companies, particularly tech companies.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other business leaders — like Marc Andreessen, cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz — have suggested that AI is being used as a smokescreen to hide the real reason some companies are slashing their staff.
“Essentially, every large company is overstaffed,” Andreesen said during a recent 20VC podcast episode. “It’s at least overstaffed by 25 percent. I think most large companies are overstaffed by 50 percent. I think a lot of them are overstaffed by 75 percent.”
“Now they all have the silver bullet excuse: Ah, it’s AI.”
"AI Washing," as Altman calls the practice, allows companies to avoid looking incompetent and cruel and instead reframe themselves as innovative and responsive to emerging tech.
Andreesen thinks the excuse is bogus.
“AI literally until December was not actually good enough to do any of the jobs that they’re actually cutting,” he said. “It just can’t have been AI.”
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