24,818 Jobs Cut at 27 Global Companies in January
As artificial intelligence (AI) makes rapid and groundbreaking advances by the day, a shadow of restructuring is growing darker, especially around big tech companies. In particular, when U.S. AI company Anthropic unveiled its AI tool “Claude Cowork” last month, concerns mounted that general-purpose AI tools would replace the high-priced enterprise software (SW) market.
According to “Layoffs.fyi,” a website that tracks restructuring at tech companies, a total of 24,818 employees were laid off at 27 technology companies worldwide last month. Considering that in the same period a year earlier, 2,537 employees were laid off at 32 companies, this represents an increase of about tenfold.
The scale of workforce reductions in the tech industry had peaked at 264,320 people in 2023, then declined to 152,922 in 2024 and 124,201 last year. However, due to the impact of advances in AI technology, the number jumped sharply again in January this year.
As AI such as ChatGPT and Gemini rapidly permeates everyday life and triggers social change, the perceived need for workforce restructuring has grown, particularly among big tech companies, and anxiety has been rising among workers at related firms.
SW stocks plunge after Anthropic unveils 'Claude Cowork'
Anthropic’s AI tool “Claude Cowork” has become a starting gun for full-scale restructuring at tech companies. As expectations spread that Claude Cowork, an “agent for execution,” could take over the role of enterprise SW, stock prices of software-related companies such as Microsoft (MS), Salesforce, and Oracle have plunged on the New York Stock Exchange over the past few weeks.
In reality, as AI replaces developers in tasks such as writing programming code and performing related work, more and more tech companies are sharply cutting back on hiring junior developers or moving to restructure their workforces. An official at a domestic IT company said, “It is true that the need for entry-level developer positions has weakened significantly as AI tools have advanced rapidly,” adding, “Some companies are responding to the changes by downsizing the scale and headcount of business units with high uncertainty.”
Recently, an essay titled “Bidding Farewell to Colleagues,” posted on social networking services (SNS) by a developer at Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company, has been repeatedly highlighted in the media. The post, written by an Amazon employee “s***” on January 29 on the workplace community “Blind,” read, “The large-scale layoff started early at dawn. The layoff notices are delivered under cover of darkness while everyone is fast asleep,” adding, “Now that there is AI, they say two people can do what it used to take ten people to do.”
The post continued, “They say another round of layoffs is scheduled for May,” and, “Lately I have been spending much of my time worried and anxious about whether I will be able to keep my position.” The essay was uploaded shortly after Amazon announced an additional round of job cuts affecting 16,000 people, and it resonated with a large number of developers.
A senior official at a domestic IT company said, “As AI development competition intensified, there was a perception that there would not be enough software developers, but in the actual job market, due to the impact of restructuring and other factors, the supply of developers is not insufficient,” adding, “Going forward, demand for entry-level developers will decrease, while the need for core, elite engineers will grow even stronger, leading to a deepening polarization.”
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