https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Ecodxn5m4
Major tech companies including Meta, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, and Tesla continue to announce large-scale layoffs, often attributing them to advances in artificial intelligence. At the same time, firms are quietly expanding through H-1B visa hiring and outsourcing to countries like India, where more than 1.6 million people now work in global capacity centers.
Data shows Salesforce, for example, cut nearly 4,000 employees while bringing in roughly the same number of visa workers over the past three years. Tesla faces lawsuits alleging the replacement of thousands of American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Amazon, despite claims of automation, secured more than 12,000 visas in 2025 alone.
Executives benefit from this strategy: every announcement of “AI layoffs” drives stock prices higher and boosts their compensation. Policies such as the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act further incentivize offshoring by lowering tax rates on overseas profits.
While AI is genuinely replacing some jobs—particularly in content moderation, customer service, and IT support—corporations are also using the technology as a convenient narrative to mask cost-cutting and labor exploitation. Unemployment among U.S. computer engineering graduates has tripled in a year, and many new graduates are struggling to secure entry-level roles that have been systematically reduced.
The long-term risk mirrors the manufacturing exodus to China in the 1980s and 1990s: a hollowing out of U.S. jobs while overseas economies flourish.