Wall Street cheers and workers fear as layoffs overshadow earnings

Layoffs are grabbing headlines this week.

On Tuesday, oil giant ConocoPhillips said it will slash up to 25% of its workforce, or about 3,250 roles — a pattern now visible across many other oil and gas companies. Chevron has likewise announced up to 9,000 cuts likely this year. Too much oil in the market and too little confidence in future demand have squeezed margins across the industry, so companies like Conoco and Chevron are leaning on job cuts to preserve cash flow. It makes sense, even if it’s not a pretty trend.

Layoffs at Big Tech companies also appear elevated, but the profit and growth story in that sector could hardly be more different. Even as companies post record second-quarter profits and boast of expanding margins and AI breakthroughs, players large and less-large are slashing headcount.

Cuts at Salesforce, Oracle, Cisco, and others

On Wednesday, Salesforce posted a 10% revenue jump to $10.2 billion and an 11% rise in its favored demand metric. Profits surged, and buybacks ballooned by $20 billion. Yet the company also reportedly gutted 4,000 support jobs, with CEO Marc Benioff saying he “needs less heads” as AI agents now handle about a million customer conversations.

Oracle is also enjoying its own banner year. Shares are up 33% year to date, hitting record highs this summer as AI cloud demand spiked. Its most recent results, released mid-summer, showed sales growing by 11% to nearly $16 billion. Behind the scenes, however, state filings and worker posts show thousands of jobs disappearing across Seattle, California, Texas, and Kansas — longtime employees included. Oracle's next earnings are due Sept. 9, with analysts predicting more positive financial news.

Cisco is another example. The company recently said that hundreds of positions are set to be cut, many of them in software engineering. The announcement came even as the company reported an 8% rise in its recent quarter, with revenue rising to $14.7 billion. It also came on top of deep cuts in 2024, when Cisco eliminated some 5,000 jobs, or roughly 7% of its workforce, as part of a plan to redirect spending toward “high-growth areas.” Cisco stock has risen about 15% year to date, behind some tech competitors, but still well ahead of the overall S&P 500.

Trend even more marked among market’s biggest stars

Microsoft, in its most recent quarter, posted sales of nearly $80 billion, and net income of $27 billion, up 24%, with earnings per share rising in tandem at 24%, too. Shares have risen some 20% this year, and the company has cut its workforce deeply at the very same time — with 15,000 workers laid off so far in 2025.

Amazon, which like Microsoft is spending tens of billions on various AI buildouts, has also cut jobs throughout 2025, while also posting rocketing sales and profits.

In its most recent release, CEO Andy Jassy expressly tied the growth to AI, saying: “Our conviction that AI will change every customer experience is starting to play out as we’ve expanded Alexa+ to millions of customers, continue to see our shopping agent used by many millions of customers, launched AI models like DeepFleet that optimize productivity paths for our 1M+ robots, made it much easier for software developers to write code with Kiro,” on top of similar AI developments.

“Our AI progress across the board continues to improve our customer experiences, speed of innovation, operational efficiency, and business growth, and I’m excited for what lies ahead,” Jassy concluded.

The takeaway

Bucking the overall tech-stock trend, Amazon shares have lagged the market so far this year.

But taken together, the message appears clear. Efficiency is in, even if it comes at the expense of payrolls — or perhaps explicitly because it comes at the expense of payrolls. Wall Street keeps rewarding companies that adopt AI while trimming, automating, and streamlining.

Meanwhile, for workers, the era of record profits feels more like an era of record precarity.