Nike cut 1,400 jobs this week, mostly in operations and technology. Citigroup started cutting toward 20,000 roles company-wide. That adds to a 2026 layoff tally already at 365 events and over 209,000 workers, the drumbeat we've tracked here for weeks.
This week's real story is what workers are doing about it. Dice released its 2026 Tech Sentiment Report, and the numbers describe a workforce moving without much hope in the move.
74% of tech professionals plan to change employers in the next year. Only 41% are confident they'll land somewhere better. That's a 33-point gap between "I'm leaving" and "I think this'll work out."
Burnout explains part of it. It jumped from 31% to 46% in a year, and 70% of the most burned-out workers are actively job searching right now. Salary and title used to top the list of reasons people give for switching jobs. Job stability now sits at #2, right behind pay. Only 34% of tech professionals say they've dodged layoffs entirely, down from 56% back in 2023.
The AI trust gap sitting underneath it
Daily AI use at work has quadrupled since Dice's last survey. And 63% of the tech professionals who aren't using AI daily believe it eliminates more jobs than it creates.
Dice's researchers found something practical hiding in that split. Confidence in how your employer handles AI, real policies, clear communication about what's automated, tracks directly with whether someone plans to stay. A clear AI policy is turning into a retention lever, right alongside pay and title.
That lines up with what we've flagged in this newsletter before. Cloud platforms have spent the past year building out governance tooling for exactly this, AWS Bedrock guardrails, Azure AI Foundry's content and access controls, GCP's Security Command Center AI features. A team that's actually configured those, instead of just having AI access turned on with no rules, is a team with an answer when you ask the trust question in an interview.
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What to do with this if you're weighing a move
If you're one of the 74% eyeing an exit, do the homework before you jump. Ask in the interview how the team actually uses AI day to day. A hiring manager who can answer that clearly, with specifics, is usually running a team that's thought carefully about the rest of its operations too.
If you're staying put, find out what your own company's AI policy says. If nothing official exists, ask your manager directly what's automated and what isn't for your role. That single conversation closes a lot of the vague dread these numbers are describing.
Pick a handful of targets instead of blitzing 50 applications this week. Ask sharper questions in interviews than you did last cycle, and use the AI-policy question as a screen for how well-run a team actually is.
The layoff numbers get all the headlines because they're easy to count. Burnout and trust are harder to measure, and this week's Dice data is one of the few times anyone's actually tried. Worth a read if you've been feeling the gap between "the market says cloud skills are in demand" and "my own job search feels miserable right now." You're not imagining it.
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