Career & Job Market — 2026-05-25

Today's Hiring & Layoff Headlines

Meta — Layoff

• What happened: Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees on May 19–20, 2026, redirecting some of those headcount savings toward 7,000 AI-related roles.
• Why: Transition to an "AI-first" company strategy; employees had organized petitions against AI tracking ahead of cuts.
• Impact: Multiple teams across engineering and product; U.S.-centric but global in scope; severance terms not publicly disclosed in detail. Employees reported difficulty identifying who had been let go.

Intuit — Layoff

• What happened: Intuit cut 3,000 jobs on May 20, 2026 — the same day as Meta's cuts — bringing the single-day total to 11,000 tech jobs eliminated.
• Why: Cost restructuring and AI-driven automation of workflows previously performed by knowledge workers.
• Impact: Multiple product and operational teams; severance details not disclosed.

1 sources

4cornerresources.com

4cornerresources.com

Cisco — Layoff

• What happened: Cisco is cutting 4,000 positions as part of continued restructuring.
• Why: Cost rationalization and a pivot toward AI networking and security products.
• Impact: Engineering and operations roles; geographies not fully specified.

LinkedIn — Layoff

• What happened: LinkedIn is eliminating 875 jobs — approximately 5% of its staff.
• Why: Restructuring as the platform reconfigures its workforce around AI product development.
• Impact: Affects multiple departments; LinkedIn is a unit of Microsoft.

2026 Tech Sector (Cumulative) — Layoff Milestone

• What happened: Tech layoffs have now exceeded 100,000 in 2026. TrueUp's live tracker shows 339 layoffs at tech companies affecting 142,985 people — roughly 993 people per day.
• Why: Broad industry restructuring driven by AI automation, cost-cutting to fund AI infrastructure investment, and macroeconomic caution.
• Impact: Industry-wide; concentrated in software, internet, and consumer tech.

1 sources

news.crunchbase.com

news.crunchbase.com

Labor Market Pulse

• U.S. Hires (March 2026 JOLTS): 5.6 million (up month-over-month) — signals that companies are still actively filling roles even as high-profile layoffs dominate headlines; total separations were little changed at 5.4 million.

• April 2026 Nonfarm Payrolls: Retail trade added jobs in warehouse clubs, supercenters, and general merchandise (+18,000) and building material/garden dealers (+13,000); social assistance continued trending up (+17,000 in April). Losses concentrated in department stores (-7,000) and electronics/appliance retailers (-2,000) — showing a bifurcated retail labor market favoring discount and home-improvement formats.

• Foreign Job Seeker Interest in U.S. Jobs: Dropped to its lowest level since early 2020, according to Indeed data — a structural shift with broad labor supply implications, particularly in construction, healthcare, and tech.

• AI Job Seeker Searches: Have grown 11x since ChatGPT's release, according to Indeed Hiring Lab (April 28, 2026), with employers concentrating limited hiring budgets on AI-related roles and skills.

Sectors in Focus

Hot Sectors (hiring up)

AI / Data Infrastructure & Construction The BLS Employment Projections homepage highlights construction employment growth driven by three converging forces: renewable energy expansion, AI data center buildout, and EV charging infrastructure. Indeed data confirms that jobs explicitly mentioning AI are growing even as broader hiring remains weak. |

Healthcare / Social Assistance Social assistance employment continued trending up (+17,000 in April 2026), and BLS data shows healthcare-adjacent roles — particularly nursing — remain in demand. The Q1 2026 Employment Cost Index notes insurers are receiving larger raises than workers overall, but nursing and direct care roles continue to see elevated demand. |

Cooling Sectors (hiring down)

Enterprise Software / Internet Tech Meta, Intuit, LinkedIn, and Cisco all announced cuts this week. Crunchbase's running tracker shows tech cuts are concentrated in software and internet companies, where AI automation is eliminating entire job categories rather than just trimming headcount at the margins.

Retail Electronics & Department Stores April payroll data shows losses in department stores (-7,000) and electronics/appliance retailers (-2,000), continuing a structural contraction in traditional retail as consumers shift to discount formats and e-commerce.

Compensation & Role Trends

1. AI skills command a hiring premium in a weak market. Indeed Hiring Lab's April 2026 research shows job seeker searches for AI roles have grown 11x since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. Employers are concentrating limited hiring budgets on AI-adjacent roles (ML engineers, AI product managers, prompt engineers, LLM fine-tuning specialists), creating a visible two-tier job market even within tech.

2. Insurers vs. workers: a widening comp gap. The Q1 2026 Employment Cost Index (published April 30) found that insurance benefit costs are rising faster than worker wages — meaning nominal raises are increasingly offset by benefit cost inflation, especially in healthcare insurance.

3. New graduates face a divided market. Indeed Hiring Lab's April 23 research found the struggle for new grads is real but uneven — graduates with AI, data, or engineering skills are faring significantly better than those in general business, liberal arts, or communications, where AI automation is suppressing entry-level demand.

4. Women have closed the workforce participation gender gap. March 2026 BLS data shows the gap between male and female labor force participation hit a record low and is still falling — a structural shift that opens new compensation equity benchmarking opportunities for HR teams.

Worker Voice

Workers on Reddit and professional communities are navigating a deeply contradictory labor market this week:

1. "Tech recruiting is especially volatile." In r/recruitinghell, a highly upvoted thread titled "The 2026 job market in a nutshell" captures widespread frustration: workers report that even well-credentialed candidates with 5+ years of experience, strong portfolios, and top-school credentials are struggling, particularly in non-AI specializations.

2. "Is the recovery narrative real or are we coping?" In r/cscareerquestions, a February 2026 thread that continues to draw engagement asks: "I keep seeing posts saying hiring is picking back up. Then I see people with 5 YOE, strong portfolios, and good schools still struggling." Replies show deep skepticism about recovery headlines, with many noting the headline jobs numbers mask suppressed entry-level hiring.

3. "US Tech Hiring Is Up 90% in 2026, But the Interview Format Has Changed." A CoderPad report shared to r/jobs in April 2026 notes that while raw tech hiring volume is rebounding, the format has shifted — more AI-assisted screening, system design rounds emphasizing AI integration, and take-home assessments that explicitly test LLM toolchain fluency. Workers who have not updated their interview preparation to include AI tool demonstrations are being filtered out at early stages.

What to Watch Next

1. Weekly Jobless Claims (Thursday, May 29) — The next initial unemployment claims release will test whether May's wave of tech layoffs (Meta, Intuit, Cisco, LinkedIn) is showing up in the macro data or being absorbed by cross-sector hiring.

2. April 2026 JOLTS Release (early June) — The March JOLTS showed hires at 5.6M; the April read will reveal whether the spring hiring season held up or if the AI-driven layoff wave started pressuring job openings.

3. Indeed Hiring Lab Monthly Snapshot — May 2026 — Following the April snapshot (published May 14), the May edition will capture real-time job posting shifts in the wake of the 11,000-job single-day cut and provide the clearest leading indicator of where demand is moving.

Reader Action Items

1. Add AI tool proficiency to your resume and LinkedIn — now. Whether you're in tech, finance, or marketing, explicitly listing LLM tools (ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini) and any AI workflow automation experience is no longer optional. Indeed data shows AI-mentioning jobs are growing in a flat market, and CoderPad's data confirms interview processes now test AI fluency directly.

2. Avoid cold applications to companies in active freeze or cut mode. Meta, Intuit, Cisco, and LinkedIn are all in mid-layoff or hiring-freeze mode. Referral-based applications and internal transfers (if you're inside a large conglomerate) have dramatically higher conversion rates right now than cold inbound applications to companies managing headcount reductions.

3. If you're a new grad or entry-level candidate, target construction-adjacent tech, healthcare IT, and AI infrastructure roles. BLS projections specifically call out data center construction, renewable energy, and EV infrastructure as growth areas — and these intersect with tech skills (project management software, energy modeling, embedded systems) in ways that sidestep the saturated pure-software market.