On October 26, Microsoft announced a Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) for about 60,000 employees — about a quarter of its workforce — across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India. This appears to be a continuation of its Voluntary Retirement Programme, which was launched in April of this year. The programme was offered to 8,600 employees in the US, and about 30 per cent of the people who were offered early retirement chose to accept it. When taken together, it appears that tech companies, having seen the growing societal backlash against AI, may now be trialling a model where they ask employees to leave on their own terms.

Despite the headlines, there is still very little known about how AI is affecting jobs. A July 2026 policy brief from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found that AI’s effect on overall employment is likely to be small for now.…