Tech layoffs in 2026 are starting to creep up in number, and it’s only a little more than a month into the year. In other words, 2026 has, so far, not been a great year for tech industry employees who likely already fear for the safety of their job positions. Tech layoffs are nothing new, and it’s like large tech companies just started handing people their walking papers in the last few weeks for the first time in history.
Still, this isn’t exactly a good sign of things to come for the remainder of the year. As tech evolves into new product categories, the ebb and flow of the industry continues to showcase to those who work in it that things aren’t always stable. Perhaps they never were. But that probably doesn’t make things feel any better. If anything, it probably makes things worse knowing that tech jobs have possibly never been as stable as people thought.
Tech industry layoffs in 2026 have already reached 30,700 globally
Layoffs in the tech industry seem like an inevitable outcome of the industry. Not too unlike the games industry these days, which is constantly seeing layoffs with an alarming turnover rate. Just this week, for example, Wildlight Studios, the development studio behind the game Highguard, reportedly laid off most of its staff. In the wider tech industry as a whole, things have reached what feels like a very high number very early in the year.
According to data put together by Alan Cohen of RationalFX, tech layoffs in 2026 have already reached a number of 30,700 employees globally. In terms of countries by the numbers, the US far outweighs other regions. This is due to Amazon‘s recent layoff of about 16,000 employees. Together with other tech companies in the US, the total number of US-based layoffs is 24,600, RationalFX says. T-Mobile, another Washington-based company, recently laid off about 400 employees.
The next closest country is Sweden, with 1,900 layoffs. Followed by the Netherlands at 1,700. This obviously trails the US number by a massive amount. Things may only get worse as the year goes on. According to the same report, 2025 had a total of about 245,000 layoffs in the tech sector. At almost a month and a half into the year, layoffs are about an eighth of last year’s total number. This is all despite companies actually increasing profits, though that doesn’t necessarily apply to all the companies in the data. At the end of the day, employment in the tech industry seems volatile at best right now.
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