April Tech Layoffs Exceed 23,000—What’s Next For Tech Jobs In 2025? – Forbes
ByRachel Wells,
Contributor.
The tech industry is being severely battered with layoffs that have seen their peak in April this … More
While the unemployment rate has held steady at 4.2% according to BLS data, it’s still disheartening to see the number of layoffs across tech companies that we witnessed last month. Although February saw the highest total number of layoffs in one month since the pandemic, April stands out for topping the number of tech layoffs within a single month.
The startup and technology news company TechCrunch reported in its layoffs tracker that April saw over 23,400 combined layoffs across various technology companies, which is about three times as much as the reported figure for March 2025. According to their tracker, here’s an overview of the number of job cuts sweeping the tech industry so far this year:
Headliners include Intel, with the largest announced share of job cuts last month (21,000), as well as other big names like Expedia, Meta, Turo, Microsoft, and even Automattic (the parent company behind WordPress).
What’s concerning about this tracker is that we are still only within the first half of the year and have barely made it into May, and yet the figures keep climbing. The layoffs are not increasing incrementally either. They’re soaring way into the thousands, with nearly seven times as many layoffs in February as there was in January, a slight relief with half the number of layoffs in March as there was in February, and then a massive jump into 23,000. The tech job market can be best described as volatile right now.
Tech is one of the best industries for remote work opportunities, competitively eye-watering salaries and compensation packages, career progression, and real impact. But despite the tech industry, startups, and AI booming, and regardless of the skills gap in this sector leading to demand for more tech talent (surprisingly enough, right), there is still a lack of job security and long-term stability at any one employer.
So if you work in tech directly as a developer or engineer, or indirectly in marketing, sales, or other job functions, what can you do to protect your career and financial stability this year?
Here are some options:
Find jobs in the tech sector that are indispensable to their business success, which you’d love at the same time. Currently, there are two roles that are surging in demand with tech, especially in U.S. based AI startups, and they both pay more than $200,000 on average. These are machine learning engineer, and enterprise tech sales. Without these pivotal roles, technology companies would crumble.
So if you’re ready to pivot, upskill, or move from a regular software engineer to studying so you can specialize in machine learning, now is your chance to make your move.
Make yourself invaluable in the tech sector by not being just another engineer or just another marketing employee. Find out what skills your specific employer and similar players/competitors are lacking, and upskill in those core areas. Sharpen and refine your technical expertise beyond generic tools and skill sets that everyone is expected to have.
Be one step ahead of your co-workers and continuously chase learning and growth opportunities to practice your skills. This way, you’re making yourself essential to the business. And in the likelihood that your role is eliminated, you could either work your way up to another role or department, or move on to another employer who needs your unique combination of skills.
Freelancing is one of the best ways to secure your finances and future-proof your career. If you work in tech (especially if you come from a FAANG company or other high-profile tech player), you already have your employer names as an asset to use as part of your portfolio and to help you pitch yourself to clients looking for high-caliber tech talent on short-term contracts and projects.
This helps if you’re applying for a freelance profile on Toptal or Contra, which are exclusive platforms for the top 3% of professionals in roles such as developers, designers, marketing experts, and product managers and consultants.
Freelancing allows you to fall back on your skills and get paid sustainably while looking for your next primary job, and you may be so successful at it that you’re able to make freelancing your full-time job. And don’t forget, freelance hiring is up by 260%, with more than half of the U.S. workforce expected to be freelancers by 2027, so you have a really strong chance of making a living and building your career through following this path.
Leverage your background and niche skills to apply for competitive freelance projects and contracts
So the question is not so much a matter of what will happen to the tech job market in 2025, but more a case of, what are you going to proactively do to fortify your career in light of mass tech layoffs this year? Are you going to succumb to the stark reality of layoffs and put your future in an employer’s hands, or are you going to carve your own path and take the reins over your future?
source
This is a newsfeed from leading technology publications. No additional editorial review has been performed before posting.
