Layoffs in IT & Tech: Engineering was once the most preferred career path for youth. Due to the huge salary and luxurious lifestyle, working in the IT sector used to be the dream of millions of youth. But now this sector is breaking those dreams. The situation is such that today most of the layoffs are taking place in the IT sector.

More than one lakh jobs were lost this year

According to data from Layoffs.fyi, jobs of more than one lakh IT professionals have been lost so far in the year 2025. The entire focus of companies is now on Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud services and profitability. This change has had a direct impact on traditional software jobs. The wave of layoffs continues from India to America’s Silicon Valley.

Layoffs from India’s TCS to America’s Intel

TCS laid off more than 20,000 employees between July and September. Intel reduced 22% of its total workforce (about 24,000 employees). The company is restructuring its units in Poland, Germany and the US to compete with competitors like AMD and NVIDIA.

Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees this year. Amazon eliminated 14,000 corporate jobs so the company could focus on cloud innovation and AI development. Meta (Facebook) and Google (Alphabet) reduced staff in hardware, Android and other divisions. Hundreds of employees in Oracle’s US office have also been affected.

Retrenchment is not limited to tech sector only

UPS (logistics company) is planning its biggest layoff ever – the jobs of about 48,000 employees are at risk. Ford Motors has announced the layoff of 8,000 to 13,000 employees.

Technical experts say that due to AI and automation the demand for traditional IT jobs is decreasing. Companies are now adopting the strategy of getting more work done with less employees. The demand for data science, machine learning, cyber security and AI-based roles will increase in the coming years, but jobs in traditional coding or support services will continue to decline rapidly.

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TCS Layoffs: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest IT services provider company, has seen a huge decline in the number of employees within a quarter. According to the latest company data, the number of TCS employees declined to 5,93,314 in the second quarter (July-September) of the financial year 2025-26, whereas it was 6,13,069 in the June quarter. That means there has been a reduction of about 19,755 employees in a single quarter.

Did TCS hide the data?

The company has described this as part of “workforce re-structuring”. TCS says that changes are being made in the number and structure of employees according to the changing business environment. However, IT employees’ organization Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has accused the company of underreporting the actual figures of retrenchment of employees.

TCS HR officer Sudeep Kunnumal recently said that the company has laid off only 1% (about 6,000 employees). But NITES refuted this claim and said that there has been a reduction of about 20,000 employees, which is much more than the company’s claims.

TCS cleaning

When the company announced its second quarter financial results on October 10, it did not send data on the number of employees or attrition to BSE. Later, in the data updated on the company’s website, the total number of employees was stated to be 5,93,314.

TCS said in July 2025 that it plans to reduce about 2% of its global workforce (about 12,261 employees), mainly at the mid-senior level. The company had described this move as part of its strategy to become a “future ready entity”. However, NITES alleges that TCS is pressurizing staff to give “voluntary resignations” to understate the actual layoffs.

NITES statement

NITES said, “This is not a minor difference. The data of about 8 thousand employees is missing. This is more than the figures accepted by TCS. This kind of misleading information cannot be called a mistake. It seems to be an attempt to understate the scale of layoffs and mislead the regulators and the public.”

The organization also said that when the attrition rate in the company is decreasing, then such a huge reduction of employees is an indication that it is not voluntary but is the result of management action. There is both confusion and opposition regarding this retrenchment of TCS. The company is calling it a process of restructuring, while employee organizations are calling it “hidden layoffs”. Now it remains to be seen what official clarification TCS gives on this dispute in the coming months.

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