Your company just posted record profits — and that is exactly why you should be updating your CV tonight.
In July 2026 alone, 25 companies announced layoffs totalling 13,532 jobs, according to a Layoffhedge analysis — and Microsoft’s cut of close to 9,000 positions was the single largest. On its own, that number is not the story. Big Tech has been trimming headcount for years. What should actually worry every professional watching from Singapore is who is doing the cutting, and why.
Amazon eliminated roughly 16,000 corporate roles in the first quarter of 2026 — in the same stretch that AWS logged its fastest growth in thirteen quarters, at 24%. Meta cut about 8,000 roles, roughly 10% of its workforce, in what a Washington Post investigation in May 2026 described as austerity dressed up as AI strategy. And Microsoft, whose shares still had their worst first half since 2022 despite the cuts, is one of four companies — alongside Google, Amazon and Meta — pouring a combined US$725 billion into AI infrastructure this year, a 77% jump on last year’s already-record spend, per a 24/7 Wall St analysis.
The mismatch got loud enough that US Senator Elizabeth Warren opened a formal inquiry in July 2026 into Meta, Microsoft and other firms cutting jobs despite what she called strong financials. Her question, stripped of politics, is the one every employee should be asking too: if the company is this profitable, why is it firing people?
1. Profit Is No Longer A Safety Signal
For a generation, “the company is doing well” meant your job was safe. 2026 broke that link, permanently.
Boards and CEOs are not choosing between paying staff and staying profitable — they are choosing between two ways of spending the profit: on people, or on the infrastructure that increasingly replaces some of what people do. Right now, capital is voting for infrastructure. Amazon’s capex hit US$44.2 billion in a single quarter, up 77% year-on-year, precisely while it was cutting corporate roles. That is not a company in trouble. That is a company reallocating.
The lesson: stop reading “our company is profitable” as reassurance. Start reading “our company is spending heavily on AI infrastructure” as your cue to check your own exposure.
2. Watch The Money, Not The Mood
Town halls are reassuring by design. Earnings calls are not — and that is exactly why they are more useful to you.
Words like “efficiency,” “reallocating investment,” and “restructuring” in an investor call almost always arrive before they show up in an internal memo. We tell our clients: read the quarterly results of your own employer — and of the two or three largest players in your industry — the way you would read a weather forecast. You are not looking for drama. You are looking for the direction of the wind.
The Solution: set a quarterly reminder to skim the earnings coverage of your employer and its closest competitors. Rising AI capex alongside flat or falling headcount is your signal to accelerate your own networking and upskilling now — not after the town hall confirms it.
3. In Singapore, The Signal Arrives Late — Not Never
Singapore’s own numbers still look calm: unemployment held at 2% through the last quarter, and retrenchments stayed low. It is tempting to conclude the storm is elsewhere.
It isn’t. Regional headquarters here typically absorb decisions made at the parent company with a lag of one or two quarters, not an exemption from them. If you work for the Singapore or APAC arm of a global company, the earnings call that matters most to your job security may not be the one your local leadership references — it is the one at headquarters, months earlier.
The Solution: track the parent company’s results, not just local hiring data. By the time a Singapore retrenchment exercise is announced, the decision was usually made somewhere else, some time ago.
The Takeaway
- Profit and payroll are no longer linked. Don’t wait for a bad quarter to start protecting yourself.
- Capital expenditure tells you where the money — and the roles — are really going. Read it like a forecast.
- If you work in a Singapore office of a global company, the real signal comes from headquarters, and it arrives before the local news does.
Stay agile, my friends!
