Meta Is Cutting 14,000 Positions, Yet The Company Has Never Been More Profitable
This is not a financial distress story. Meta generated $201 billion in revenue in 2025, up 22% year-over-year. The company has $43.6 billion in annual free cash flow. It doesn’t need to cut to survive. It’s cutting to fund a bet: $115 billion to $135 billion in AI infrastructure spending in 2026 alone, up from $72 billion last year. Chief People Officer Janelle Gale’s memo to employees made the trade explicit: “to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” That’s the clearest AI-for-headcount swap any major employer has put on paper.
The structural shift driving it: Zuckerberg has spent over $70 billion on AI, including a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Scale’s CEO, Alexandr Wang joined Meta as Chief AI Officer and leads its new Superintelligence Labs division. Teams across the company are being reorganized into AI-focused pods. The people being hired aren’t the people being fired. That’s the point. U.S. workers affected will receive 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks per year of employment, along with 18 months of health coverage.
The 6,000 canceled open roles are the number that doesn’t show up in the unemployment rate. As we’ve tracked throughout this layoff cycle, the traditional metrics miss what’s happening to candidates locked out of jobs that simply disappeared. For anyone in tech right now, particularly in roles that AI agents can plausibly do, the competitive edge is no longer your skill set alone. It’s your judgment, your relationships, and your ability to do work that AI still can’t. If you’re looking for your next move, the time to act is before the next wave, not after.
4 in 10 Americans Over 60 Say They’ll Never Fully Retire Because They Can’t Afford To
While the AI layoff story dominates tech headlines, ZipRecruiter’s Retirement Realities survey of 1,500 Americans aged 60 and older tells a quieter but equally significant workforce story. More than four in ten workers 60+ say they’ll never fully stop working, and 60% of them say it’s because they can’t afford to.
The savings math is stark. The typical American 60+ has saved $100,000 toward a $250,000 goal, leaving a $150,000 shortfall at the point they’d expect to be winding down. Social Security is carrying most of the weight: 47% of adults 60+ rely on it as their primary income source, and among the fully retired, that climbs to 71%. The top financial worries (inflation (62%), healthcare (59%), outliving savings (42%)) aren’t anxieties about the future. For many, they’re the reasons they’re still clocking in.
The gender gap is the hardest number in the report. Women’s median retirement savings is $60,000. Men’s is $199,000. That’s a $139,000 gap. 28% of women aged 60+ have nothing saved at all. For unmarried women, the median is $19,500. The financial fragility data we’ve tracked in our own Q2 Employee Mindset Survey shows this isn’t isolated to older workers; nearly half of all workers lack four months of emergency savings, but the retirement picture shows where that fragility leads over time.
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Layoff Watch – Nike and PGA Tour
Two more layoff announcements landed on Thursday alongside the Meta news.
Nike is cutting approximately 1,400 jobs, just under 2% of its global workforce, from its Global Operations team, primarily in technology, across North America, Asia, and Europe. COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy’s memo to employees tied the cuts to centralizing tech operations into two hubs: Beaverton, Oregon, and Nike India Technology Center. It’s the second round of cuts in 2026, following 775 eliminated roles in January. Nike’s business context matters: shares have lost more than half their value over the past three years, competitors like On and Hoka have taken meaningful market share, and the company is forecasting a 2% to 4% sales drop this quarter, with China expected to fall 20%. This is what a turnaround-under-pressure looks like. Tech roles inside non-tech companies are among the most exposed seats in the current economy, and Nike’s pattern (775 cuts in January, 1,400 in April) fits a rolling reorganization. When a company trims multiple times in a year, the next announcement rarely looks like a hiring push.
The PGA Tour also cut 4% of its workforce Thursday, 56 full-time employees laid off and 73 open positions closed, as part of a restructuring tied to its transition to a for-profit model under PGA Tour Enterprises. CEO Brian Rolapp sent a memo to staff after a third-party consulting firm completed a review. Strategic Sports Group had agreed in January 2024 to invest up to $3 billion in PGA Tour Enterprises, with $1.5 billion already deployed. Talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (which controls LIV Golf) have gone quiet since a White House meeting in February 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
Meta is cutting 10% of its workforce to redirect spending toward AI infrastructure. The company plans to spend $115 billion to $135 billion on AI in 2026 (nearly double last year’s $72 billion) and is reorganizing teams around AI-focused “pods.” The cuts aren’t driven by financial pressure. Meta generated $201 billion in revenue in 2025 with $43.6 billion in free cash flow.
U.S. employees affected by Meta’s May 20 layoffs will receive 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of employment, along with 18 months of health coverage.
Financial necessity is the primary driver. ZipRecruiter’s Retirement Realities survey found that 60% of workers 60+ who say they’ll never fully retire cite finances as the reason. The typical American 60+ has saved $100,000 against a $250,000 goal. 30% stay employed specifically to maintain healthcare coverage, and 42% stay to cover caregiving costs.
According to ZipRecruiter’s survey, women 60+ have a median retirement savings of $60,000 compared to $199,000 for men, a $139,000 gap. 28% of women in that age group have saved nothing at all, and unmarried women have a median savings of just $19,500.
