Bay Area tech workers continue to lose jobs, but recovery may be in view

As Bay Area tech companies continue to shed jobs, signs have emerged that point to an overall easing of employment losses for the region’s most notable industry.

Hiring and firing patterns have been nothing short of a roller coaster for the tech industry over the last five years, according to seasonally adjusted industry estimates produced by Beacon Economics that were derived from state Employment Development Department reports.

During the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, a surge in remote work and distance learning spurred demand for technologies and services that could connect employers with workers, teachers with students, and retailers with customers.

The tech industry responded with the addition of 97,600 jobs in the Bay Area during the boom years that followed the onset of pandemic-linked shutdowns. In 2020, Bay Area employers added 2,400 tech jobs. A year later, that number jumped to 58,100 followed by a gain of 37,100 in 2022, Beacon estimates show.

Then came years of cutbacks.

“Tech companies are still right-sizing after all the overhiring during the pandemic,” said Russell Hancock, president of San Jose-based think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “It’s been four years already, so it sounds like an excuse, but you have to realize they built new organizations and divisions for demand curves that didn’t pan out. They’re still refactoring.”

From 2023 to 2025, the Bay Area lost 137,200 tech jobs. Tech companies announced multiple waves of worldwide tech layoffs during those years.

Santa Clara-based Intel said it intended to slash 34,000 jobs by the end of last year. Seattle-based Amazon said it was planning layoffs ranging from 14,000 to 30,000 jobs. Seattle-based Microsoft said it decided to cut 19,000 jobs and Menlo Park-based Meta Platforms said it was cutting 3,600 jobs worldwide.

“The tech layoffs in 2025 represented the last stage of recalibrations” for the industry, said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former director of the state EDD. “The pace of layoffs has slowed, and tech firms have reset.”

Losses were dramatically reduced in 2025 when compared with the cutbacks of 2023 and 2024, Beacon estimates show. In 2025, Bay Area employers cut a net total of 27,300 tech jobs. In 2023, the industry shed 49,700, followed by a loss of 60,200 in 2024.

“The post-pandemic hemorrhaging of tech jobs is slowing,” said BMO Capital Markets chief economist Scott Anderson. “Three years of downsizing have helped rebalance payrolls.”

The region’s tech industry has begun to leak fewer jobs due in large measure to reduced bleeding of jobs in the South Bay.

Just 8,300 of 2025’s losses occurred in tech’s primary employment hub. In 2024, the South Bay lost 42,600 tech jobs, Beacon estimates show.

Any improvement in hiring might help steady the weak employment picture in the Bay Area, which lost 20,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in 2025. In December, the Bay Area added 2,300 jobs of all types, an increase that was nudged along by a gain of 1,800 tech jobs in the South Bay.

“The Bay Area job losses may end soon but that is a long way from reigniting strong job growth” in the tech sector, said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

Levy believes that three things are necessary for the Bay Area tech industry to turn things around.

“One, we have to step up housing production that is affordable to new workers,” Levy said. “Two, we need to have the data center and AI innovation translate into new jobs. Third, we need immigration policies that are more welcoming to both the highly skilled and the service workers we need for a complete functioning economy.”

Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s Hancock believes the U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited President Donald Trump’s authority to impose emergency tariffs via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 could buoy the Bay Area tech industry by removing an array of impediments.

“The ruling spares Silicon Valley from a host of downstream effects that were detrimental,” Hancock said. He added that the detriments included “global supply chain issues, cost impacts, boycotts and other retaliatory measures.”

Hancock pointed out that a specific tech device or service is often not produced in a single location.

“A tech product, any tech product, is a piece of global manufacture, not local,” Hancock said.

Yet the uncertainty over tariffs might be far from over, because the Supreme Court specifically limited President Trump’s authority to employ the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 as a foundation for tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Friday address to the Economic Club of Dallas.

“This administration will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the IEEPA tariffs,” Bessent said Friday. “We will be leveraging … tariff authorities that have been validated through thousands of legal challenges.”

Tech companies will have to sift through the Supreme Court ruling and be prepared to be nimble as White House replacement tariffs come into view.

“Today’s ruling adds massive amounts of uncertainty to how tariff policy will play out, as there remain administrative avenues to change tariff rates,” said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “Until there is more clarity on tariff policy going forward, tech companies’ abilities to plan for the future and invest may be put on hold.”

Still, the Bay Area tech industry faces more than a cycle of hiring and layoffs.

Artificial intelligence technologies pose an existential challenge — and opportunity — for companies, some economists say.

While the core nature of the AI revolution might lead to a boom in technologies, it won’t automatically translate into a jump in the pace of job creation.

“We’re hiring people with rarefied skills to do machine learning, massive computational processing, and really, really big data,” Hancock said. “Tech urgently needs those people, but they don’t need armies of them.”

Despite uncertainties, artificial intelligence could eventually fuel a job boom once the industry gets a handle on the types of workers it might need over time.

“Rapid investment growth in new AI models and capabilities is leading to new Bay Area hiring gains in some emerging technology roles,” Anderson said. “This bodes well for a more stable Bay Area labor market in 2026 after years of technology company headwinds.”