People still need people, tech giants have learned, meaning they need a lot fewer. Luckily, AI means never having to say ‘you’re fired.’

(Originally published Jan. 24 in “What in the World“) The tech industry is experiencing a massive labor hangover. After a massive hiring binge during the pandemic, the sector has fired more than 200,000 workers in the past year, including 50,000 layoffs at the industry’s four largest companies: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Microsoft.

Much of what the industry now admits was over-hiring was due to a mistaken belief that the surge in demand for online services as people avoided human contact would survive the pandemic. Alphabet said last week it would shed 12,000 employees. Microsoft said it would lay off 10,000 and then this week announced a reported $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the lab that built ChatGPT. The latest was Spotify, which Monday said it was firing 6% of its workers, or 600 people.

One company, Meta, has fired 12.6% of its workers. “At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online, and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote to employees Nov. 9. “Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”

U.S. President Joe Biden has refused to negotiate with Republicans demanding spending cuts in return for an end to their refusal to lift the government debt ceiling, which was reached last week.

While there still appear to be no specific demands, Republican lawmakers are leaning towards some kind of decade-long spending cap like the one they negotiated in 2011 with then-President Barack Obama. One moderate Republican Congressman, Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, is leading a bipartisan effort to replace the current debt ceiling’s nominal dollar limit with one set at a percentage of gross domestic product. What percentage, or whether it would avert the present crisis, is unknown. Fitzpatrick co-chairs the moderate Problem Solvers Caucus but isn’t part of the right-wing Freedom Caucus that now holds sway over the Republican-led House of Representatives.