MIT report basically confirms AI isn't the real reason for all these recent tech layoffs

https://preview.redd.it/tdu1uitj7m3h1.png?width=1344&format=png&auto=webp&s=728acd105c7595cd253bf2e41a2a7fc1eee7c5f6 So, David Rotman over at MIT Technology Review just dropped a pretty solid analysis on how AI is actually impacting the job market. Basically, he argues that the whole global panic about white-collar workers getting wiped out by AI is totally overblown. According to him, the recent tech layoffs we've been seeing are actually driven by other macroeconomic stuff, not AI taking everyone's jobs. For some context, we've all seen the massive layoffs from tech giants like Meta, Coinbase, and Cisco lately. Take Meta for example, they cut about 10% of their global workforce, which is around 8,000 people. But what's interesting is that they actually reassigned 7,000 of those roles to new AI-related projects, all while bumping their 2026 capital spending to somewhere between $125 billion and $145 billion. Rotman points out that companies often use AI as a convenient excuse for general restructuring without any real factual proof, which completely distorts the actual employment picture and freaks the public out for no reason. Why this actually matters is that all these exaggerated claims about AI completely destroying jobs are messing with long-term government policies, corporate planning, and public debates. The actual economic data shows that, at least for now, the tech is just automating and modernizing existing workflows, not causing some massive structural unemployment crisis. Source: [https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/26/1137855/a-reality-check-on-the-ai-jobs-hysteria/](https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/26/1137855/a-reality-check-on-the-ai-jobs-hysteria/)