113,000 Tech Layoffs + $725B in AI Spending: What It Actually Means for Your Entry-Level Career in 2026

# 113,000 Tech Layoffs + $725B in AI Spending: What It Actually Means for Your Entry-Level Career in 2026

> **Quick answer:** 113,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 while Big Tech spent $725 billion on AI — a 75% jump over 2025. The cuts are real and concentrated at the entry level, but the picture is not uniformly bleak. IBM is tripling entry-level hiring. AI is creating 92,000+ new roles paying 56% more than the jobs it eliminates. The path into tech still exists — it just runs through AI oversight, human judgment, and cross-functional skills instead of boilerplate code. Here is the full decision framework.

Tech layoffs 2026 and $725 billion in AI capital expenditure are happening simultaneously, and if you are early in your career — or about to start one — the two numbers feel impossible to reconcile. Companies are firing people and buying GPU clusters with the savings. The entry-level tech path that existed three years ago has been restructured out of existence. But IBM just tripled its entry-level hiring. The paradox is real, and understanding it precisely is the difference between a panicked pivot and a strategic move.

## The Numbers Behind the Paradox

The scale of the 2026 tech layoffs is not a rounding error. According to layoff tracking data through mid-May 2026, 113,000+ tech workers have lost jobs across 179 companies — an average of 825 people per day since January 1. That pace is roughly 33% higher than the same period in 2025.

The highest-profile cuts arrived in waves: