In a shift that is unsettling both the workforce and commercial real estate sector, top executives at leading U.S. corporations are openly embracing smaller teams—and increasingly citing technology as justification.
Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf, speaking on the bank’s July 15, 2025, earnings call as transcribed by S&P Global Market Intelligence, highlighted the organization’s marked reduction in staff. “What you’ve seen kind of quarter-on-quarter-on-quarter is our headcount has come down, using attrition as much as we can as our friend to create those efficiencies,” Scharf explained. He added that technological advances would only accelerate this trend.
Chief Financial Officer Michael Santomassimo pointed out that headcount reductions have been sustained for 20 consecutive quarters. “I think there’s more to do there really across almost every part of the company, and I think we’ll continue to drive that the same way we’ve done that the last number of years,” he said.
This trend goes beyond Wells Fargo. The Wall Street Journal has reported that major employers such as Union Pacific and Verizon are also prioritizing staff reductions. Management at these firms increasingly views large employee bases as liabilities. “The headcount, we have been very, very good and it’s going down all the time,” Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg said during the company’s July 21, 2025, call. Verizon CFO Anthony Skiadas reported a 3.7% year-over-year drop in headcount, attributing the shift in part to advancements in artificial intelligence and the consolidation of IT platforms and real estate.
Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo to employees last month, said that generative AI and digital agents are poised to transform work processes: “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.”
Recent data, underscored by workforce researcher Amanda Goodall on X, illustrates the scale of the fallout: 13,470 layoffs in biopharma as of June, an estimated 18,000 to 22,000 layoffs at Microsoft so far in 2025, with more anticipated and approximately 25,000 job losses globally at Intel.
Although streamlining staff isn’t entirely new, the momentum behind it is growing—and so is the role of machine learning in the process. In January, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 41% of employers planned to reduce staff with diminishing or obsolete skills, with 83% already deploying AI technologies.
“I’m worried it’s happening in plain sight with no blowback, no pushback, and it’s going to become the norm,” Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the WSJ. She observed that companies seem to face little criticism for publicizing AI-linked job cuts, adding, “I don’t think that’s good news for the American worker.”
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