Coinbase Cuts 700 and Indeed/Glassdoor 1,300 — The 'AI-Centric' Layoff Wave Hits Hiring Tech

Coinbase announced on May 5 that it will cut roughly 700 jobs — about 14% of its workforce — and scrap plans to fill 6,000 open roles, citing a shift to a more 'AI-centric' workflow. Days earlier, Recruit Holdings, the parent company of Indeed and Glassdoor, confirmed roughly 1,300 layoffs across the two job-search platforms. CEO Hisayuki 'Deko' Idekoba framed the cuts in unusually direct language: 'AI is changing the world,' and the company has to adapt accordingly.

The Hiring-Tech Layoff Is the Tell

What makes this week's cuts different from earlier 2026 layoffs is who is doing them. Indeed and Glassdoor are not generic SaaS companies cutting middle management — they are the companies that sell hiring infrastructure to everyone else. When the businesses whose entire revenue model depends on job postings and applicant volume start citing AI as a reason to shrink internal headcount, it signals something about where they think the hiring market is heading. Coinbase, similarly, is not cutting engineering — leadership has explicitly said it is investing in AI-augmented engineering teams while reducing the support, research, and operations roles that AI agents are now handling internally.

First-Quarter 2026 Layoff Math

The new cuts compound a Q1 picture that was already worse than 2025. Tech-industry layoffs hit 78,557 workers between January 1 and the end of April, with 47.9% — roughly 37,638 cuts — directly attributed by employers to AI and workflow automation, according to layoff trackers. The total layoff event count for 2026 stands at 179 incidents affecting 113,863 workers, an average of roughly 904 job losses per day. CFO surveys in March suggested AI-driven cuts in 2026 would land at about nine times the 2025 level — a projection that, six weeks in, looks less like an outlier prediction and more like a baseline.

The Hire-and-Fire Split Inside the Same Companies

The headline numbers obscure a more textured pattern: 92% of companies still plan to hire in 2026, even as 55% expect layoffs. The same employer is often cutting recruiters, mid-level marketing roles, and customer-support tiers while expanding AI engineering, security, and core product teams. That bifurcation matters because the workers affected on each side are not interchangeable — a laid-off recruiting coordinator does not pivot into an AI security engineer over a weekend. The career hazard is being on the wrong side of that split inside an organization that, on net, is still 'hiring.'

What This Means for Your Career

If your employer announces an 'AI-centric workflow' restructure, treat it as an early warning, not a productivity slogan. The roles consistently being eliminated in this wave — Tier-1 support, generalist recruiting coordinators, content moderation, mid-level marketing analysts, basic financial analyst tasks — share a profile: high-volume, structured, and AI-automatable end-to-end. The roles being spared or expanded share a different one: judgment-heavy, cross-functional, or directly responsible for shipping AI capability. Audit your role against that split before your employer audits it for you.