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Tech companies in Silicon Valley have jettisoned a noteworthy number of employees in the first half of 2026.
Companies in the sector have laid off 7,295 employees in the first half 2026 – just 9% short of the number of jobs cut by tech companies during all of 2025, according to an analysis from Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
The layoffs are on pace to be the worst in the tech industry since 2023, a particularly bad year of workforce reductions following the Covid-19 pandemic. That year, 14,501 jobs – roughly double the number in the first of 2026 – were cut, according to Joint Venture’s analysis. The analysis was conducted by Danny Wessler, a senior researcher at the think tank.
Russell Hancock, CEO and president of Joint Venture, described the current economy as a “paradox.” The unemployment rate in Silicon Valley in June was 3.9%, slightly lower than the national unemployment rate in July of 4.1%. At the same time, the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics job growth report indicated that the U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July.
“We have a very hot innovation engine, but it’s not translating into job growth,” Hancock said. “Usually, when you have layoffs or less hiring, people are talking about recession…. this is the exact opposite of that. We are not in a recession. We’re in a boom.”
The results of Joint Venture’s analysis of Silicon Valley were slightly less alarming than a report from the San Francisco Chronicle, which found that global tech layoffs in the first seven months of 2025 had already surpassed the number in 2026.
Several factors could be contributing to this year’s tech layoffs, Hancock said. The first is that some companies overhired during the Covid-19 pandemic, when demand for digital services surged and concerns about a labor shortage prompted some companies to expand their workforces. Large language models like ChatGPT were released in 2022 as companies emerged into the post-pandemic economy. Both forces have led some companies to recalibrate toward smaller teams, Hancock said.
Joint Venture’s layoff analysis tracked job cuts in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties through June 30, 2026. The organization uses the California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining (WARN) notices which are filed with the state’s employment development department within 60 days of a mass layoff. But, there are caveats to WARN filings, Wessler noted.
“WARN reports aren’t perfect – they only cover bigger layoffs (50+ employees) at bigger companies (75+ employees), and there are ways for companies to get around the filing requirement,” Wessler said over email. “The data is almost certainly an undercount, but it gives us a directional sense of scale over time.”
Joint Venture’s methodology classified a company as a tech industry by using the NAICS industry code and with assistance from artificial intelligence. A significant portion of the layoffs through June came from Meta, which cut around 3,382 positions from offices in two counties.
Despite the latest wave of layoffs, there are reasons for optimism in the Silicon Valley labor market: impacted employees from tech companies can generally go to adjacent fields like health care or startups, Hancock said.
“Most of the folks that are getting laid off… they land on their feet,” Hancock said. “Yes, layoffs, but no corresponding uptick in unemployment. It means that the valley is doing OK. In fact, better than OK. We are the epicenter of this new wave.”
