AI Layoffs Mount as Hassett Claims No Job Losses

Tech and automotive companies have cut tens of thousands of jobs in early 2026 while citing AI-driven restructuring, even as National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on May 11 that there is “no sign in the data” that AI is costing anyone their job. The disconnect between official economic commentary and corporate action has sharpened into one of the defining workforce tensions of the year.

What Companies Are Actually Doing

The gap between Hassett’s position and corporate behavior is measurable. According to CNBC, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle have all announced job cuts explicitly tied to AI adoption in 2026. Block cut its workforce by nearly half in February, with the company citing a pivot to smaller teams using AI to handle workloads previously requiring more headcount.

Meta is the most prominent case. According to Wired, the company plans to cut roughly 8,000 employees — approximately 10% of its workforce — by May 20, framed internally as a move to “run the company more efficiently” and “offset” other investments. Those cuts come on top of roughly 25,000 positions Meta has eliminated over the past four years.

The automotive sector tells a parallel story. TechCrunch reported that Ford, GM, and Stellantis have collectively cut more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs — representing 19% of their combined workforces from recent employment peaks — with technological change, including AI adoption, cited as a contributing factor across all three companies.

The Skills Swap That Isn’t One-for-One

General Motors offers the clearest window into how companies are managing the transition. The automaker laid off more than 600 salaried IT employees — over 10% of that department — while simultaneously announcing it would recruit workers with AI-focused backgrounds, according to TechCrunch.

The roles GM is prioritizing include:

• AI-native development
• Data engineering and analytics
• Cloud-based engineering
• Agent and model development
• Prompt engineering
• AI workflow design

The company is explicit that it wants people who can build AI systems from the ground up — designing architectures, training models, engineering data pipelines — not workers who use AI as a productivity layer on top of existing workflows.

But TechCrunch noted a critical caveat: the exchange will not be one-to-one. Fewer people will be hired than were let go, meaning the net employment effect is negative even in companies that describe the process as a skills upgrade rather than a pure cost cut.

Inside Meta: Surveillance, Severance, and Union Organizing

At Meta, the workforce disruption extends beyond headcount. According to Wired, 16 current and former employees — who declined to be named under company policy — described the installation of corporate software on employee computers to monitor activity, with the stated purpose of training AI models.

One Meta policy staffer told Wired: “The vibe is a bit ‘over it’ — lack of connection to the mission, upcoming layoffs, American employees being used to train the AI models that will replace them.”

The morale situation has reached the point where employees who can afford to leave are actively hoping to be included in the layoff cohort, multiple people told Wired, because the severance package — a minimum of 16 weeks of pay plus 18 months of paid health care — makes a layoff preferable to a voluntary resignation. In the UK, some Meta workers have begun registering signatures to form a labor union.

Meta’s financial results add a layer of friction to the internal atmosphere. The company posted record-high profits in its most recent quarter, meaning the layoffs are not a distress response but a deliberate margin expansion strategy during a period of strong revenue.

Hollywood Writers Are Training the Models Replacing Them

The workforce displacement is not limited to tech and manufacturing. A first-person account published by Wired from a working Hollywood showrunner describes the informal economy that has absorbed displaced entertainment workers: AI data labeling and model training.

The writer — who has produced shows for Paramount, Hulu, and the BBC — began taking AI training contracts in early 2025 after a producer defaulted on a six-figure payment. The work involves assessing chatbot tone, annotating video footage, red-teaming safety systems, and generating synthetic content for model training. Employers include companies such as Mercor, Outlier, Turing, and Micro1.

The account reflects a broader pattern in Hollywood. The 2023 writers’ strike was partly fought over AI replacement provisions. When it ended after nearly five months, the entertainment industry did not recover its prior production volume. Unemployed writers, facing debt and reduced work, have quietly moved into AI training roles — effectively supplying the labor that makes the systems more capable of displacing future creative work.

Coinbase’s Approach: Fewer People, More Output

The dynamic is not limited to companies announcing formal layoffs. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on X on May 5 that AI now allows him “to ship in days what used to take a team weeks,” and that non-technical teams are shipping production code while workflows are being automated. The implication is that output scales without proportional headcount growth — a structural shift that suppresses hiring even when a company is not actively cutting.

This pattern — where AI increases productivity per employee rather than triggering explicit layoffs — is likely what Hassett’s aggregate economic data captures. Job losses may not spike in ways traditional employment surveys detect, but hiring freezes and suppressed headcount growth produce similar long-run effects on employment levels.

What This Means

Hassett’s claim that AI is not costing anyone their job right now is technically defensible in a narrow sense: aggregate unemployment figures have not spiked in a way that can be cleanly attributed to AI. But the company-level evidence points to a more complex picture.

Firms are using AI adoption as cover for workforce reductions that serve multiple purposes simultaneously — cost cutting, margin expansion, and genuine operational restructuring. The workers most affected are not always the lowest-skilled; Meta’s mandatory role changes targeted senior engineers, GM’s cuts hit salaried IT professionals, and Hollywood’s displaced workers include experienced showrunners.

The skills-swap narrative — where AI eliminates some jobs but creates new ones requiring AI expertise — is real but asymmetric. The new roles require years of specialized training that displaced workers rarely have, the hiring volume is lower than the job losses, and the transition period imposes real economic harm on individuals even if aggregate statistics eventually balance.

The broader risk is that official economic commentary, anchored to lagging employment data, consistently trails the lived experience of workers inside companies that are actively restructuring around AI — leaving policy responses perpetually behind the curve.

FAQ

Is AI causing tech layoffs in 2026?

Multiple major companies — including Meta, Amazon, Block, GM, Ford, and Stellantis — have announced significant workforce cuts in 2026 while citing AI-driven efficiency or skills restructuring as contributing factors. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on May 11 that aggregate employment data shows “no sign” of AI-driven job loss, but company-level announcements tell a different story.

What jobs are companies hiring for as they cut AI-displaced roles?

General Motors, which cut over 600 IT employees, said it is recruiting specifically for AI-native development, data engineering, cloud engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and AI workflow design. These roles require building AI systems from scratch, not simply using AI tools — a distinction that limits how many displaced workers can transition directly.

What are displaced Hollywood writers doing for income?

According to a first-person account published by Wired, a number of unemployed Hollywood writers have taken AI data labeling and model training contracts through platforms such as Mercor, Outlier, and Turing. The work includes annotating video, assessing AI-generated text, and red-teaming safety systems — lower-paying work than their prior creative roles, and work that directly supports the AI systems competing with entertainment writers.