July marks record 24,500 tech job cuts: TCS, Microsoft, Intel hit hardest
The month began with Microsoft announcing that it was laying off nearly four per cent of its global workforce across teams and role types. These job cuts are said to have impacted Microsoft staff across geographies. In less than a fortnight, another tech major, Intel, announced that it was laying off more than 5,000 employees across four states in the US. Closer to home, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced that it was sacking over 12,000 of its staff.
While these job cuts in July largely impacted the workforce in the US, on July 27, TCS claimed that it would be axing two per cent of its global workforce, which would spell job loss for over 12,000 employees. The announcement by TCS comes at a time when the company has been battling allegations of forced resignations following its new 'bench policy' that limited an employee's bench duration to 35 days annually.
Bench usually refers to the time when an employee is not actively assigned to a client project but stays on a company's payroll. Based on TCS' bench policy, employees were expected to spend four to six hours daily upskilling themselves through internal platforms with strict work from the office. Experts claimed that the policy puts the onus on employees to proactively seek new projects through the Resource Management Group. Reportedly, these long periods without allocation could likely impact their compensation, growth, employment continuity, and other opportunities.
In response to the job cuts, TCS claimed that it is on a journey to become a future-ready organisation. Their vision includes strategic initiatives on multiple fronts, investments in new-tech areas, entering new markets, deploying AI at scale, creating next-gen infrastructure, and realigning their workforce model.
Microsoft, which announced its layoffs on the second day of its 2026 fiscal year, asserted that it continues to implement organisational changes necessary to best position itself and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace. This was not the first time this year that the Redmond-based tech giant was announcing job cuts.
In January, the company announced it was laying off less than one per cent of its staff based on performance; in May, it cut over 6,000 jobs and 300 more in June. This is the biggest layoff by Microsoft since 2023, when it laid off over 10,000 of its staff. Microsoft is reportedly looking towards reducing the layers of middle managers between top executives and individual contributors.
Another notable development was Intel's decision to lay off over 5,000 of its workforce across four states in the US. The layoffs by Intel were not just limited to the US; some reports even suggested that the company was sacking staff from its branch in Israel.
In the US, most of the layoffs were reported from California and Oregon. Intel said that it was taking steps to become a leaner, faster, and more efficient company. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, after his takeover, has been prioritising Intel's core products for a new era of computing that is being defined by AI.
On July 10, Indeed and Glassdoor said that they were cutting about 1,300 jobs to move towards AI. The companies said that these cuts will impact their workforce in the US, in teams such as research development, people, and sustainability. While the company did not give any specific reason for the layoffs, in his memo CEO Hiyasuki Deko Idekoba said that AI is changing the world and that there was a need to adapt by ensuring that the company's products deliver truly great experiences.
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