Meta Is Profitable, Growing, & Laying Off 8,000 People
Here’s what makes this round different from 2022 and 2023. Those were correction layoffs; Meta had massively overhired during COVID, economic forecasts shifted, and the company cut to right-size. What’s happening now is something else. Meta posted over $200 billion in revenue last year and cleared $60 billion in profit. The business isn’t struggling. Leadership is making a calculated bet that AI can do a significant portion of the work their current headcount does, and they’re acting on that bet now, before they have to. Engineers across the company are being moved into a new Applied AI group focused on building agents that can write code and complete complex tasks on their own. The restructuring, in their words, is about “fewer management layers and greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.”
Zoom out, and the pattern gets harder to ignore. Amazon has trimmed roughly 30,000 corporate employees in recent months. Block cut close to half its staff in February. Layoffs.fyi puts total tech job losses at over 73,000 in 2026 so far. For anyone working in tech right now, the takeaway is direct: if your role is one that AI is getting measurably better at, staying sharp on the tools isn’t optional… It’s the job.
A Verizon CEO Is Saying What Most Won’t
While most Fortune 500 CEOs talk about AI’s upside and sidestep the displacement question, Verizon CEO Dan Schulman is doing something different. In a WSJ interview published Sunday, he predicted unemployment could reach 20% to 30% within the next two to five years as AI and automation accelerate. He’s also flagging humanoid robots as a threat to manual labor roles that many still assume are safe.
Schulman’s credibility here matters. He’s not a doomsayer on the sidelines; he’s the CEO who already cut 13,000 jobs at Verizon, the company’s largest round of cuts in its history, and launched a $20 million career-transition and retraining fund alongside those cuts. He’s also pushing AI use internally, making it central to how Verizon operates going forward. He’s not anti-AI. He just thinks leaders need to be honest about what it means. As he told the WSJ: “Being authentic, being realistic, telling the truth, as best you can, is key.”
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Goldman Sachs Says EQ Is Your Best Protection in the AI Era
While the displacement conversation dominates, a Forbes interview with Jacqueline Arthur, Goldman Sachs’ Global Head of Human Capital Management, offers a more actionable frame. Her argument is that as AI takes over analytical and repetitive work, what’s left becomes more human: judgment, trust, relationship-building, and the ability to lead through uncertainty. Those aren’t consolation prizes, but rather the actual differentiators.
What’s notable is how Goldman is operationalizing this. They’re not running “AI training” and “leadership development” as separate tracks. They’re integrating them; when employees learn AI tools, they’re simultaneously trained on judgment, transparency, and oversight. Arthur’s framing: “AI can process the information, but it can’t build trust, it can’t navigate nuance, and it can’t lead people through complexity.”
For employers trying to hire and develop talent right now, this changes two things. Screening needs to evolve; if judgment and influence are the differentiators, technical tests alone don’t identify the right people. And your training strategy needs a rethink. The companies that separate AI skills from human skills are building two half-solutions. For job seekers, the message is equally direct: if you’re only focused on learning tools, you’re solving half the problem. The people who win are the ones who can interpret, communicate, and lead with those tools, not just operate them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Meta’s cuts aren’t about financial distress; the company made $60 billion in profit in 2025. They’re about reallocating resources toward AI infrastructure, which Meta has projected at $115-135 billion in spending in 2026. Leadership believes AI can replace significant portions of current headcount, so they’re restructuring proactively rather than waiting.
According to Layoffs.fyi, over 73,000 tech workers have lost jobs so far in 2026. Major contributors include Meta, Amazon (roughly 30,000 corporate cuts), Snap (16% of its workforce), Disney, and others.
Goldman Sachs’ Jacqueline Arthur points to emotional intelligence, judgment, trust-building, and the ability to lead through uncertainty. These are skills AI can’t replicate, and as AI handles more analytical work, they become scarcer and more valuable, not less.
Views differ sharply. Verizon CEO Dan Schulman has predicted 20-30% unemployment within two to five years. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and others argue AI will ultimately create more jobs than it eliminates. Boston Consulting Group research predicts AI will reshape roughly half of U.S. jobs in two to three years, with about 15% eliminated outright.
