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Wednesday, October 28, 2026 |
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The Last Page.
The last page, first.
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Is Microsoft’s Offer to 60,000 Workers the Start of AI Layoffs?
Microsoft is offering a big slice of its staff money to leave. Big-company bosses still expect to hire, while Goldman Sachs warns AI job losses speed up once the economy slows.
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AI is doing more of the work at big companies. One startup checks the code it writes, and you can invest in it from $1,000:
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AI now writes more code, the instructions that tell programs what to do. Think of it as a fast new hire who is new to the building. It can fix one thing and break another, such as billing, because it does not yet know how the whole place works.
With that map, the AI can check what a change will hit before it makes it. Companies pay Bito for that tour. Bito is raising on Wefunder. Investors can back the company through a SAFE, a contract that may later turn into a small ownership share. Customer outcome statistics are based on Bito customer data and self-reported outcomes. Individual results may vary based on codebase complexity, team structure, and implementation. Reg CF SAFE offering via Wefunder. Minimum investment: $1,000. Valuation cap: $90 million. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid. Review the terms and risks at https://wefunder.com/bito/.
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The story
On Monday, Microsoft offered about 60,000 employees money to leave. Roughly one worker in four.
Employees of any age can take it. Fortune reported that the U.S. package starts at eight weeks of pay, plus health coverage for a limited time. Workers have until early December to decide.
The memo from Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s chief people officer, never mentions AI. It says the offer gives anyone already weighing a future elsewhere “a new choice to make that transition now with support.”
Yet the same company spends tens of billions of dollars a quarter on AI data centers. It reports quarterly earnings after the market closes today.
This matters beyond Microsoft. If you own an S&P 500 fund, you own a piece of the company. And if you are over 55 and still on someone’s payroll, a letter like this could reach you next.
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If that letter comes and you take it, you may move your 401(k) into an IRA. The new account needs its own beneficiary form, since the old one stays with the old plan. Below, Anchor Point Research shows why that one page can outrank your will, and how gold in an IRA passes to your children:
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You decide who inherits your accounts. Reviewing your beneficiary forms makes sure your choices hold.
If your will splits an account between two children and the form names only one, that child gets it all.
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So is this AI taking jobs, or a rich company trimming? The forecasters split.
KPMG surveyed 400 chief executives of big U.S. companies this month. Nearly nine in ten expect to add people over the next three years. “I’m not seeing a significant reduction,” said Tim Walsh, who runs KPMG in the U.S.
Goldman Sachs is more worried. Its economist Joseph Briggs estimates AI could push up to 9% of American workers out of their jobs within a decade.
He wrote that “a cyclical slowdown would likely accelerate” those losses. In plain words, a weaker economy would bring them faster.
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Millions of Americans drive for a living. Tesla says it is trying to get its driverless Cybercab to customers by the end of this year. Brownstone Research, an investment research firm, says it filmed one, so you can judge it with your own eyes:
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Just a few years ago, they laughed at him.
And said that what Elon was planning to do was impossible.
In 2018, the New York Post even called Elon “a total fraud.”
And it proves the media was 100% wrong about Elon.
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60,000
Microsoft workers offered money to leave this week
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29,000
Jobs the whole U.S. economy added in September
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$15,914
One year of a standard health plan at 60, with no government help
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COBRA
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The law that lets you keep your old employer’s health plan for up to 18 months after you leave. The catch is the price: you pay the whole premium yourself, plus 2%.
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If hiring holds up
Our best-case projection: June 2027
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If the economy slows
Our worst-case projection: March 2027
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Best case
JUNE 2027. The exit window closed in December, and enough people said yes that Microsoft never sent layoff notices. It kept hiring for AI work, as it had while it trimmed.
Hiring across the country picked up again over the winter. The bosses in KPMG’s survey added people a few percent at a time, the way most of them had planned.
Goldman’s 9% is still a forecast, spread over years instead of landing at once. Your own company sent no letter at all.
For the 64-year-old who took the check, the math worked. COBRA carried his health plan to 65, when Medicare took over.
And your index fund owns a Microsoft that does more with fewer people.
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Worst case
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MARCH 2027. The October jobs report showed the country losing jobs again, as it had in July, and the slowdown Goldman described arrived.
About one Microsoft worker in 20 took the offer before its December deadline. That is the share Seattle TV station KIRO 7 said similar offers usually draw.
The layoffs came in January anyway, and other big companies copied the order. Offer first, cut second.
Then the bill reached people in their 60s. A 60-year-old laid off in January gets COBRA for 18 months. At full price.
After that, a standard plan runs about $1,300 a month at today’s prices. Above roughly $62,600 a year in income for a single person, no government help with the premium.
Claiming Social Security at 62 to cover it means about 30% less a month, for life.
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How it ends
You get a slow trim paid in exit checks, not a wave of layoffs, unless the job count turns negative again.
Today’s cuts come from profitable companies trimming, which is the slow version. “They’ve continued to hire people while they’re firing people,” Seattle University economist Joseph Philips told KIRO 7 about Microsoft.
AI was the top reason companies gave for job cuts this year, Challenger, Gray & Christmas found: about 120,000 jobs through September. Across a workforce near 170 million, that is about one job in 1,400.
The fast version needs a downturn. Hiring is already thin: 29,000 jobs in September, after a loss in July.
While the country still adds jobs, AI mostly shows up as buyouts and slower hiring. In a slowdown, companies cut first and let the software cover the gap.
For anyone between 55 and 64, the money is the easy part. A buyout at 60 is really a health insurance decision with a severance check attached.
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The October jobs report, out Friday, Nov. 6, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. If the country lost jobs again, as it did in July, the slowdown has started.
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