According to CoinMeta, AI is weakening employment in the tech industry, and layoffs by Oracle and Microsoft have pushed the layoff rate to a 20-year high. In June, the layoff rate in the tech industry reached 2.3%, surpassing the peaks during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2001 recession, with approximately 63,000 employees being laid off. Oracle cut 21,000 positions, accounting for 13% of its total workforce, explicitly stating that this was due to the deployment of AI. Meanwhile, Cisco and Intuit reinvested the saved labor force into their AI infrastructure. AI accounted for 23% of the layoff announcements in the United States in 2026.