Companies Are Lying About AI Layoffs (huijzer.xyz)

Researchers and reporters are calling out a divergence between corporate narratives about AI-driven layoffs and U.S. visa data that suggests many firms are simultaneously hiring large numbers of H‑1B workers. Vanessa Wingårdh analyzed USCIS H‑1B approvals for fiscal years 2023–2025 (through June 30, 2025) and found major tech employers with thousands of beneficiaries—Google (~15,000), Microsoft (~14,700), Amazon entities (~19,300 and ~12,600), Meta (~13,300), Apple (~11,900), Infosys (~17,500) and others—while those same companies publicly announced large U.S. layoffs. The Wall Street Journal and some senators have amplified the discrepancy, prompting questions about whether layoffs are being paired with hiring on cheaper H‑1B contracts. The significance is twofold: it challenges the common corporate framing that AI and macroeconomics alone explain workforce reductions, and it raises regulatory, labor-market and ethical issues around potential substitution of domestic employees with outsourced or visa‑sponsored labor. Technically, the evidence rests on cross-referencing USCIS beneficiary approvals with announced layoff figures; it doesn’t prove causation but suggests a pattern warranting audits, tighter H‑1B oversight, clearer corporate disclosure, and policy debate about immigration rules, wage suppression and the real labor impacts of AI adoption.