# AI was the top reason cited for US job cuts for the third straight month in May

> Source: <https://sherwood.news/tech/ai-was-the-top-reason-cited-for-us-job-cuts-for-the-third-straight-month-in-may/>
> Published: 2026-06-12 12:20:56+00:00

# AI was the top reason cited for US job cuts for the third straight month in May

Employers blamed AI for nearly 40% of May's cuts — a share that’s kept climbing since Challenger began tracking it in 2023.

With Corporate America finding plenty of ways to [describe](https://www.businessinsider.com/list-companies-replacing-human-employees-with-ai-layoffs-workforce-reductions) its AI-driven *reinvention* this year — from preparing for the "[agentic era](https://sherwood.news/markets/gitlab-falls-on-workforce-reduction-plan-tied-to-agentic-era/),” to building businesses with “[humans around the edge](https://sherwood.news/markets/coinbase-eliminating-14-percent-workforce-2026/)” — last month brought yet another unmistakable sign that AI has become the go-to explanation for layoffs, according to [new data](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-may-job-cuts-rise-16-from-april-highest-may-total-since-2020/) from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

In May, US employers announced 97,006 job cuts, the highest tally for the month since the pandemic spring of 2020. Artificial intelligence was cited ahead of all other job-cut reasons for the third month running, with 38,579 cuts attributed to the technology — **nearly 40%** of the total and the highest single-month figure since Challenger began tracking it in 2023.

AI has now been linked to more than 87,700 cuts through May, easily blowing past the ~54,800 attributed to it in all of 2025 — a figure that had already more than **quadrupled **from 2024 and risen roughly **13x** from 2023. The technology has so far made up **more than one-fifth** of all announced job cuts in the US, up from just 0.6% in 2023.

Of course, that doesn’t mean AI is actually single-handedly replacing all those workers. A growing [body](https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/evidence-of-an-ai-driven-shakeup-of-job-markets-is-patchy/) of [analysis](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-03-13/the-ai-washing-of-job-cuts-is-corrosive-and-confusing) has questioned whether companies are, in fact, using the technology as a more investor-friendly shorthand for cuts actually driven by more familiar pressures, like cost-cutting, restructuring, or simply [slower hiring](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/mar/effects-low-fire-low-hire-economy-workers).

The anxiety is getting harder to dismiss, though. This week, Anthropic [pledged](https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-dario-amodei-ai-afeb5279eef406980dffa46ff91495e0) **$200 million **toward studying AI’s economic impact, as CEO Dario Amodei warned [in a new essay](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-ai-related-job-displacement-policy-plan-2026-6) of the “decent possibility” of "significant enduring job loss” caused by AI.

**Go deeper**: [AI is becoming a go-to reason for layoffs — but is it actually replacing workers?](https://sherwood.news/markets/ai-is-becoming-a-go-to-reason-for-layoffs-but-is-it-actually-replacing/)