Key Takeaways
- 7,000 US jobs were cut in September 2025 due to artificial intelligence.
- Across 2025 so far, 17,375 jobs were cut due to AI impacts and 20,219 others were cut due to “technological updates.”
- The tech sector is the second-biggest industry for job cuts in 2025, after the US government.
Artificial intelligence has led to 7,000 US jobs cut in September 2025 alone, according to a new report.
The same report has recorded a total of 17,375 job cuts attributed specifically to AI between January and September of 2025, which means that a large portion of AI-related cuts this year happened last month.
Here’s the rest of the stats to know about which sectors are cutting the most jobs and what reasons they’re giving for their decisions.
About 27,219 Job Cuts Due to AI or Tech Updates
The report, out from executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, found that, across the month of September 2025, 7,000 job cuts were “due to artificial intelligence specifically.”
That’s not all: An additional 20,219 job cuts (across the year so far) were “attributed to technological updates that likely include artificial intelligence.”
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Out of the 54,064 job cuts from US-based employers last month, over a tenth were due to AI or tech updates that might have been AI related.
Tech Sector Faces ‘Incredible Disruption’
The technology industry is the second-largest contributor to US job losses this year, with 5,639 cuts last month adding up to a total of 107,878 job cuts in 2025 so far.
“Tech firms are undergoing incredible disruption with AI that is not only costing jobs, but also making it difficult to land positions, particularly for entry-level engineers. Tech leaders have stressed that AI is changing the nature of work, and more companies are requiring their teams be trained on it.” – Challenger report
Granted, those numbers are down 8% from 2024, when 116,856 job cuts were announced during the same period last year.
The biggest industry cutting jobs in 2025, according to the report? The US government, with 299,755 planned job cuts this year (mostly federal workers impacted by DOGE).
Salesforce Is Among Companies Cutting Jobs for AI
The report didn’t explain which companies are behind all these AI-powered job losses. However, CFO Dive dug up one noteworthy example: Salesforce.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff mentioned during a podcast conversation in August that the company had already reduced its customer service team from 9,000 to about 5,000, citing the benefits of AI agents for customer conversations. Those cuts wouldn’t be among those from September, but were likely logged among the 17,375 job cuts due to the AI this year.
Check out our long-running list of tech companies that have issued large job cuts across the past few years.
Can AI truly replace human workers? That question’s been asked a lot in recent years, amid a surge in AI hype. However, the more salient question for the average worker is: Does my boss think AI can replace me? In September, sadly, 7,000 people got their answer.
