Two CEO Surveys Confirm Near-Unanimous Expectation of AI-Driven Layoffs as 2026 Tech Job Losses Top 134,000
Mercer and Oliver Wyman surveys find 99% of executives expect AI to cut headcount, while 2026 tech layoffs have already reached 134,603 across 212 companies.
Overview
Two major surveys of global business leaders, released within weeks of each other this year, have arrived at a striking convergence: executives have reached near-unanimous agreement that artificial intelligence will cause headcount reductions. The finding lands as 2026 tech sector layoffs have surpassed 134,603 workers across 212 companies, according to the Skillsyncer layoffs tracker — a pace of 916 job losses per day that outstrips all of 2025’s daily average of 564.
The two surveys — Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 Study and the Oliver Wyman Forum and New York Stock Exchange CEO Survey — document a leadership class that is simultaneously reshaping its workforce around AI tools while expressing growing uncertainty about whether those tools are delivering the expected returns.
What the Surveys Found
Mercer’s Global Talent Trends Study, published February 25, 2026, surveyed nearly 12,000 respondents including C-suite executives, HR leaders, investors, and employees during September–October 2025. The headline figure: 99% of CEOs in the study expected AI to lead to at least some headcount reduction within two years. In a separate but consistent finding, 98% of executives reported planning organizational design changes within the same timeframe.
The report found that employee anxiety has risen sharply alongside executive planning. Workers concerned about job loss due to AI climbed from 28% in 2024 to 40% in 2026, while the share of employees reporting they are thriving at work collapsed from 66% in 2024 to 44% today. Despite broad CEO consensus on disruption, only 51% of C-suite respondents said they felt their organizations were prepared for the human-machine era — down from 65% in 2024.
Mercer’s report acknowledged a communication gap at the heart of the transition: 62% of employees agreed that leaders underestimate AI’s emotional impact, yet only 19% of HR leaders said they consider those emotional impacts as part of their digital implementation strategy.
The Oliver Wyman Forum and NYSE CEO Survey, published April 7, 2026, focused its lens more narrowly on the C-suite. The survey covered 415 CEOs — 266 from public companies and 149 from private companies — representing roughly 10% of global market capitalization, including 65 Fortune 500 CEOs.
Its most striking workforce finding: the share of CEOs planning to reduce junior and entry-level roles jumped from 17% in 2025 to 43% in 2026, a near-tripling in one year. Simultaneously, 33% of CEOs said their workforce would shift toward mid-level roles, and 45% said they planned to hold headcount flat — up from 31% in 2025. Fewer companies appear to be adding staff broadly; more are consolidating.
John Romeo, CEO of the Oliver Wyman Forum, described the shift as more nuanced than simple replacement: “AI is not just automating tasks; it is elevating the value of entry-level talent,” according to the Investing News Network. Ana Kreacic, Partner and COO of the Oliver Wyman Forum, framed executive behavior more broadly: “CEOs are no longer waiting for stability before they act. They are converting disruption into a competitive advantage.”
The ROI Paradox
Both surveys expose a consistent tension: executives are cutting staff in part to fund AI adoption while simultaneously expressing uncertainty about whether that adoption is paying off.
The Oliver Wyman survey found that 53% of CEOs said it was too early to assess the return on their AI investment — up from 41% in 2025. Only 27% said ROI had met or exceeded expectations, down from 38% the prior year. Nearly 25% reported zero revenue impact from their AI deployments, as reported by Tom’s Hardware.
Mercer’s report similarly found that only 32% of executives believed their organizations could “optimally combine both human and machine capabilities,” according to The HR Digest, and just 30% rated their organizations’ digital agility as high.
Mercer put the challenge in the following terms: “Realizing a true return on AI investments depends on intentionally redesigning work and building AI-enabled operating models.”
May 2026: A Month of Concentrated Cuts
The survey data has played out in real time. May 2026 has produced some of the year’s largest layoff announcements, with InformationWeek’s rolling tracker documenting a cascade of cuts across sectors.
May 20 became the year’s single largest layoff day: Meta notified approximately 8,000 employees — roughly 10% of its workforce — that their positions were eliminated, according to 4 Corner Resources. The company simultaneously moved 7,000 workers into four AI-focused organizations and canceled 6,000 open positions. Intuit announced cuts of approximately 3,000 employees — 17% of its global staff — the same day, closing its Reno and Woodland Hills offices. Combined, the two companies eliminated roughly 11,000 jobs in a single day.
Cisco cut approximately 4,000 employees, or 5% of its workforce, on May 14. CEO Chuck Robbins said the company was prioritizing investment in “silicon, optics, security and in our employees’ use of AI.” LinkedIn eliminated approximately 875 positions — 5% of its roughly 17,500 employees — on May 13, affecting engineering, product, and marketing teams. Coinbase cut 700 employees, or 14% of staff, on May 6; CEO Brian Armstrong noted that AI had “automated many workflows.”
Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi offered a dissenting view of the AI narrative. “None of it had to do with AI,” he said of his company’s decision, as InformationWeek reported — an assertion that other CEOs in the same month made no effort to advance.
Earlier in the year, the cuts were even larger by volume. Oracle’s March 31 announcement of 30,000 positions — the largest single tech layoff event of 2026 — accounts for the spike in March’s total of 49,802 affected workers, according to the Skillsyncer tracker. Amazon shed 16,000 in January as part of a combined 30,000-person reduction spanning late 2025 and early 2026.
Who Is Most Affected
Among sectors, software and technology companies account for the largest share of 2026 cuts — 43,845 workers — followed by IT services and consulting (30,333) and telecommunications (16,643), per Skillsyncer data. US workers account for approximately 97,134 of the 134,603 total affected globally.
The Oliver Wyman data suggests the structural impact will concentrate most heavily at career entry points. The jump from 17% to 43% of CEOs planning junior role reductions reflects a broader industry shift that The Machine Herald previously reported in the context of Federal Reserve and Harvard research: AI appears to be compressing the labor market’s lower rungs while increasing the value of experienced workers. The Oliver Wyman survey adds executive intent data to that research picture — confirming it is now active policy in boardrooms, not just an observed trend.
One nuance from the Oliver Wyman data complicates the narrative: among companies that describe themselves as AI ROI leaders, 24% said they planned to increase junior-level hiring, according to Investing News Network. The implication is that the effect on entry-level roles may depend significantly on how mature a company’s AI deployment already is — with laggards cutting junior staff as a cost measure while advanced adopters see entry-level talent as a competitive input.
What We Don’t Know
- Whether the 2026 pace will continue: the Skillsyncer tracker shows April was the lightest month of the year at 13,040 affected workers, suggesting the rate is uneven rather than linear.
- The net job creation picture: layoff trackers measure cuts but not new hires, and some companies announcing reductions are simultaneously posting AI-related roles.
- Whether stated CEO intentions translate to actual headcount: 45% of the CEOs in the Oliver Wyman survey said they planned to hold headcount flat, not reduce it.
- How much of the ROI uncertainty will resolve as AI deployments mature: 67% of CEOs in the Oliver Wyman survey said they remain in planning or piloting stages, meaning the bulk of AI’s organizational impact has likely not yet arrived.
Analysis
The convergence of the Mercer and Oliver Wyman findings is notable not for confirming that AI causes layoffs — that debate continues — but for showing how thoroughly the expectation of AI-driven workforce change has permeated executive thinking. Near-unanimity among C-suite respondents is rare in any survey covering strategy; finding it on a topic as consequential as mass headcount reduction signals that the question has shifted from whether AI reshapes hiring to how fast and in what configuration.
The ROI data complicates the narrative of confident corporate transformation. A majority of CEOs surveyed by Oliver Wyman cannot yet determine whether their AI investments are working, while simultaneously executing layoffs that are, in part, funded by those investments. The 2026 tech layoff total of 134,603 — already exceeding 2025’s daily pace by more than 60% — provides the concrete labor market backdrop against which these executive attitudes should be read.
The gap Mercer identifies between leadership’s AI ambitions and HR’s emotional-impact awareness, and the gap Oliver Wyman identifies between ROI expectations and ROI results, suggests that even if AI’s long-term productivity case is sound, the near-term organizational costs — measured in workforce anxiety, leadership preparedness, and disrupted career ladders — are falling faster than the gains are materializing.