By Michael Phillips | TechBay.News
The next wave of job cuts is already being quietly planned—and 2026 is shaping up to be the year many companies finally pull the trigger.
According to late-2025 economic analysis from Goldman Sachs, businesses across the developed world are preparing for another round of workforce reductions driven not by recession fears, but by long-term cost restructuring tied to artificial intelligence. Even in a relatively stable global economy, executives are betting that automation will permanently change how much labor they need—and who they need it from.
This is not the dramatic “robots take all the jobs” narrative. It’s something more subtle, and potentially more destabilizing: preemptive layoffs in anticipation of productivity gains that are uneven, incomplete, and still years away.
Layoffs Without a Downturn
Historically, large layoff announcements were often rewarded by markets as a sign of discipline and efficiency. That relationship has broken down.
Goldman Sachs economists tracking corporate earnings calls and workforce data have noted a shift: layoffs increasingly trigger stock price declines averaging around 2%, signaling investor concern about weak growth rather than confidence in efficiency. In other words, cutting jobs is no longer a bullish signal—it’s often interpreted as an admission that revenue growth may not materialize.
Yet companies are moving ahead anyway.
Why? Because AI changes the long-term math. Executives are willing to absorb short-term skepticism if it means structurally lower labor costs in three to five years.
Automating First, Benefiting Later
One of the most striking elements of the current trend is timing. Many firms are reducing headcount before AI systems have fully delivered productivity gains.
Goldman’s analysis of S&P 500 earnings calls shows that companies most aggressively talking about AI are also:
- Cutting job postings
- Freezing hiring in back-office functions
- Framing layoffs as “restructuring” tied to automation
The expectation is that productivity gains will eventually arrive—but executives are unwilling to carry current payrolls while waiting for them. This creates a lag period where workers are displaced faster than new AI-enabled roles are created.
The Roles Most at Risk
The next round of automation is not aimed at creative leadership or hands-on technical innovation. It’s targeting work that can be standardized, monitored, and repeated.
The most vulnerable roles include:
- Administrative and clerical work
- Customer support and call-center operations
- Data entry and routine reporting
- Back-office professional services
- Tier-one IT and helpdesk functions
These jobs are not disappearing because they lack value—but because AI can now perform enough of the task reliably to justify fewer human workers.
New Jobs—But a Narrow On-Ramp
AI will create new demand, but it will be unevenly distributed.
Growing roles include:
- AI development and model engineering
- Data governance and compliance
- Systems integration and oversight
- AI ethics, auditing, and risk management
The problem is not that new jobs won’t exist—it’s that reskilling is hard, expensive, and often unrealistic for mid-career workers displaced from routine roles. The distance between a customer support job and an AI governance role is not trivial, and many workers will struggle to bridge it quickly.
A More Permanent State of Insecurity
Perhaps the most important takeaway from Goldman Sachs’ broader research is not mass unemployment, but structural job insecurity.
Their long-term outlook remains balanced:
- AI-driven displacement so far affects a modest share of jobs
- New occupations and productivity gains are expected over time
- Historical parallels (electricity, computers) suggest net job growth
But the transition period matters. If companies continuously automate in anticipation of future gains, workers may face repeated cycles of uncertainty—even in “good” economic years.
For policymakers and business leaders, this raises uncomfortable questions. For workers, it means the old assumptions about stability may no longer apply.
The AI era may not eliminate work—but it is clearly rewriting the rules of who feels secure doing it.
TechBay.News 
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