Layoffs are no longer just something workers and investors track. They have increasingly become something traders can put money on.
- On Kalshi, traders currently price roughly a 92% chance that layoffs in the U.S. information sector will exceed their 2025 total this year. More than $31 million has traded on the contract.
- Polymarket traders are making almost the same call, putting the probability at about 91%, although trading volume there is much smaller at roughly $26,000.
Both markets ultimately resolve using monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Specifically, they track layoffs and discharges in the information sector, which includes industries such as software, publishing, telecommunications and data services, rather than every company commonly described as "tech." The 2025 benchmark is 447,000 layoffs.
Tech cuts rise while broader layoffs fall
The bets are arriving amid an unusual split in the U.S. labor market. U.S.-based employers announced 477,033 job cuts through July, down 41% from the same period in 2025, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm that tracks announced layoffs.
But technology has moved in the opposite direction. Tech employers announced nearly 150,000 cuts through July, up 67% from nearly 90,000 during the same period last year.
- Technology accounted for roughly 31% of all announced U.S. job cuts in 2026, making it the largest sector in Challenger's dataset.
- Artificial intelligence has increasingly appeared in the explanations companies give.
- Challenger counted 112,713 job cuts attributed to AI so far this year, or about 24% of all announced reductions and said AI was the leading cited reason for layoffs for a fifth consecutive month in July.
Another tracker tells a similar, although methodologically different, story. Layoffs.fyi had recorded about 127,000 tech workers cut across 281 companies by late August, already above the 122,000 workers it recorded during all of 2025. The tally remains well below 2023, however, when the tracker counted more than 265,000 layoffs.
Challenger tracks announced cuts by U.S.-based employers, while Layoffs.fyi compiles publicly reported tech layoffs using its own methodology.
Crypto has already broken its own record
Crypto appears to be following the broader tech retrenchment, though measuring the industry comes with its own problems.
As The Coinformer analyzed earlier this month, at least 50 crypto companies had announced staff cuts in 2026 by early August, already more than in any full year since 2018.
That was about 32% above the previous record of 38 companies in 2023, even with almost five months of the year still remaining. The tracker counted 29 companies cutting staff in 2022, 23 in 2024 and just 18 in 2025.
And unlike the 2022 crypto downturn, when layoffs clustered around collapsing asset prices and industry failures, there has been no single explanation this time.
Of 54 separate 2026 layoff entries reviewed by The Coinformer, 22 were classified as driven by market conditions, 19 as restructuring and nine as AI-related pivots. Companies including Coinbase, the Ethereum Foundation, Pump.fun, FalconX, Luno, BitMEX and Polygon-related teams have appeared in this year's layoff data.