Today 02:16 AM
(This post was last modified: 6 hours ago by C C.)
Tech workers are in deep, deep trouble (excerpts): For years, any American kid eying a stable, future-proof job was told to “learn to code.”
Now in 2025, anyone who followed that advice faces a painful reckoning: a decade of booming computer science enrollments has created a massive pile-up of graduates entering an abysmal job market.
A new report by the analyst firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks layoffs across various industries, found that the US tech industry had the highest number of layoffs in October of any sector, with a whopping 33,281 tech workers out of the job.
[...] And it likely may not look much better in the near future, either. ... tech company job cuts in the US are at their highest levels since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a short-lived recession.
For the month of October, however, the analyst report notes that total layoffs haven’t been this high since 2003 — in other words, not even the global financial crisis was this much of a bloodbath. While it’s easy to blame AI for the tech industry layoffs, CG&C highlights some other factors contributing to the dismal labor news.
[...] The depressing economic news comes as tech companies look to be some of the first adopters of their own AI systems, a proving ground of sorts for the software they hope will bring about a new stage of human civilization...
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Is AI coming for your job? Maybe (excerpt): While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how much AI is driving layoffs or drops in hiring, signs of its growing impact are hard to miss.
From Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in May telling CNBC the Swedish fintech company reduced its workforce by 40% to Ford CEO Jim Farley in June saying AI will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S,” AI is making its mark on the U.S. workforce.
Max Leaming, ManpowerGroup’s head of data science and AI solutions, pointed out one of the first areas affected by AI is software development. It’s not a surprise, he said. It could make sense that AI is learning to do some of the work done by the people it interacts with most...
Now in 2025, anyone who followed that advice faces a painful reckoning: a decade of booming computer science enrollments has created a massive pile-up of graduates entering an abysmal job market.
A new report by the analyst firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks layoffs across various industries, found that the US tech industry had the highest number of layoffs in October of any sector, with a whopping 33,281 tech workers out of the job.
[...] And it likely may not look much better in the near future, either. ... tech company job cuts in the US are at their highest levels since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a short-lived recession.
For the month of October, however, the analyst report notes that total layoffs haven’t been this high since 2003 — in other words, not even the global financial crisis was this much of a bloodbath. While it’s easy to blame AI for the tech industry layoffs, CG&C highlights some other factors contributing to the dismal labor news.
[...] The depressing economic news comes as tech companies look to be some of the first adopters of their own AI systems, a proving ground of sorts for the software they hope will bring about a new stage of human civilization...
- - - - - - - - - - -
Is AI coming for your job? Maybe (excerpt): While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how much AI is driving layoffs or drops in hiring, signs of its growing impact are hard to miss.
From Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in May telling CNBC the Swedish fintech company reduced its workforce by 40% to Ford CEO Jim Farley in June saying AI will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S,” AI is making its mark on the U.S. workforce.
Max Leaming, ManpowerGroup’s head of data science and AI solutions, pointed out one of the first areas affected by AI is software development. It’s not a surprise, he said. It could make sense that AI is learning to do some of the work done by the people it interacts with most...