What gets included
- Layoffs where the company itself, or credible reporting, cites AI or automation as a driver of the cuts.
- Cuts made to fund AI investment or to refocus resources on AI.
- Not included: layoffs where AI was only used to decide who was cut, or where the link to AI is speculation.
- No job-creation figures. No reliable count of jobs created by AI exists, and estimates are not comparable with announced cuts.
Attribution levels
Every entry records who connected the cuts to AI:
- Explicit
- The company, or an executive speaking for it, cited AI or automation as a reason the roles were no longer needed, in a memo, press release, filing, earnings call or on-record statement.
- Strong
- The company did not say so directly, but credible reporting established AI as a driver, or the company said the cuts would fund or refocus resources on AI.
"Explicit" means the company made the claim, not that AI demonstrably did the work. Company statements are recorded as made and are not independently verified.
How AI is linked to the cuts
Separately from who made the link, each entry records what the source says AI has to do with the cuts:
- Automation
- AI or automation now does the work the cut roles did, or lets smaller teams do it.
- Reinvestment
- The cuts free money or attention for AI: data centres, AI products or AI-focused hiring. AI is not said to have replaced anyone.
- Disruption
- AI eroded demand for the company's product, for example by diverting search traffic.
The field is left empty when the source cites AI only in general terms ("AI is changing how we work") without saying which. It is read from the source's own wording and is not a judgement of whether the claim is true.
Counting rules
- Headline totals sum exact headcounts only. Percentages ("40%") and ranges ("4000-6000") are recorded exactly as reported and never estimated into totals, so the totals are a floor.
- Dates are when the cuts were announced or first reported.
- Countries are the company's home country, not where the cuts happened.
- Roles are recorded as reported; "Various" means the source gave no breakdown.
Sources and verification
Every entry links to the news report, company statement or regulatory filing it is based on. New candidates are found by monitoring news coverage, and each one is checked by hand against its source before it is added.
How this compares with other counts
This dataset is a sample of publicly reported cases, not a census. Cuts that are never reported in the press are missing, so it undercounts.
It is not comparable with Challenger, Gray & Christmas, whose monthly report counts job cuts announced by U.S.-based employers and sorts them by the reason the employer gave. Challenger's latest AI figure is 120,136 (U.S. job cuts citing AI, Jan–Sep 2026). This tracker covers companies in every country, includes cuts attributed to AI by credible reporting, and names each company. Do not add or subtract the two figures.
Download and field definitions
The full dataset is free to download as CSV or JSON under CC BY 4.0. See press & data reuse for how to cite it.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| id | Stable identifier: company slug plus the entry date. |
| date | Date the cuts were announced or first reported (YYYY-MM-DD). |
| company | Company making the cuts. |
| country | The company's home country, not where the cuts happened. |
| industry | The company's industry. |
| sectors | Business lines affected (semicolon-separated in the CSV). |
| roles | Roles affected as reported; "Various" when the source gives no breakdown (semicolon-separated in the CSV). |
| employees_affected | Headcount exactly as reported: a number, a percentage such as "40%" or a range such as "4000-6000". Empty when no figure was disclosed. |
| employees_affected_exact | The headcount when it was reported as an exact number, otherwise empty. Only these values are summed in the tracker's totals. |
| attribution | "explicit" when the company itself cited AI; "strong" when credible reporting established it. |
| mechanism | How the source links the cuts to AI: "automation" when AI or automation does, or removes the need for, work the cut roles did; "reinvestment" when the cuts fund or refocus resources on AI; "disruption" when AI eroded demand for the company's product. Empty when the source cites AI only in general terms. When a source gives more than one, the one it puts first. |
| reason | Summary of the cuts and of how AI was cited. |
| source | Publisher of the source. |
| source_url | Link to the source. |
Corrections policy
If an entry is wrong, missing a better source or should not be here, tell us on X at @AILayoffs. Corrections are made once checked against a source, and every correction or removal is dated in the changelog below.
Changelog
- Added four entries from August to October 2026: E.W. Scripps, Booksy, Reach plc and HoneyBook. Checked and rejected AI links reported for Amazon (October 2026), Qualcomm, IBM, Workday, Uber (September 2026), Etsy and Admiral, whose own statements did not cite AI or denied it.
- Added a mechanism field recording how each source links the cuts to AI: automation, reinvestment or disruption. 15 entries are left unclassified because their sources cite AI only in general terms.
- Corrected the source label of the Kroger entry (October 2026): the linked article is a Fox Business story republished by FOX 5 Atlanta.
- Added CSV and JSON downloads, a suggested citation, this methodology page and a press page.
- Re-checked the 19 entries that predate attribution labels. Removed five that do not meet the inclusion rule: Atlassian (July 2025) and Canva (April 2025), which said AI did not cause the cuts; McKinsey & Company, whose headcount fell through attrition; the FDA, whose cuts the source did not attribute to AI; and Salesforce (February 2025), whose cuts were only reported alongside AI sales hiring. Labelled the other 14, replaced aggregate-list sources with direct ones, and corrected six dates.
- Removed all job-creation figures: the pages they cited did not exist or did not contain the figures.
- Retired seven sample analysis posts that were design placeholders; their URLs now redirect to the Analysis & Reports index.
- Refreshed the dataset through October 12, 2026, to 82 entries, each linked to its source.
- Tracker launched.