The Netherlands plans 25,000 government job cuts as it explores AI savings. See the 2027 timeline and steps for Dutch and EMEA public-sector IT teams.
The post Netherlands Plans 25,000 Job Cuts as Government Turns to AI appeared first on TechRepublic.
The Netherlands plans 25,000 government job cuts as it explores AI savings. See the 2027 timeline and steps for Dutch and EMEA public-sector IT teams.
The post Netherlands Plans 25,000 Job Cuts as Government Turns to AI appeared first on TechRepublic.
Nearly 200,000 workers have been affected by tech layoffs in 2026. See which companies are cutting jobs and what it means for tech workers.
The post Tech Layoffs 2026: 196,000 Workers Affected as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft Cut Jobs appeared first on TechRepublic.
Nearly 200,000 workers have been affected by tech layoffs in 2026. See which companies are cutting jobs and what it means for tech workers.
The post Tech Layoffs 2026: 196,000 Workers Affected as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft Cut Jobs appeared first on TechRepublic.
Editor’s note: GeekWire has been examining the economic challenges facing Seattle and the lessons the region can learn from Cleveland’s industrial decline and ongoing comeback. This three-part series from GeekWire columnist and angel investor Charles Fitzgerald explores how Seattle can navigate its own economic transition, adapt to a changing technology landscape, and preserve the prosperity that generations of innovation have built.
As you think about Seattle’s next act, let me offer a catchphrase: Don’t be Cleveland.
Before anyone from Northeast Ohio takes me to task again, let me quickly clarify: Don’t be the Cleveland of the last half of the 20th century. Today’s Cleveland is a story Seattle should study.
I’m far from the only one worried about Seattle. City Hall, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and the newly formed Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound are all sounding alarms about the region’s economic future.
An independent 127-page City of Seattle-commissioned economic assessment — Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy — takes issue with the Cleveland comparison I penned for GeekWire earlier this year. The report says claims that Seattle could become the “next Cleveland” are “likely hyperbolic,” while acknowledging that “Seattle has real economic challenges.”
Hyperbolic is far from the worst thing I’ve been called.
Despite a reluctance to fully embrace Cleveland as a cautionary tale, the city’s report provides more to agree with than disagree with. And kudos to the city for taking an honest look at the economy, including criticism of the mayor’s signature policies.
Over the past decade, Seattle delivered more broad-based prosperity than almost any U.S. region, according to the Seawall report. Wages rose across the income spectrum, with the biggest gains at the bottom. Even after adjusting for living costs, workers at the 25th percentile earned roughly 15% more than their counterparts in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Minneapolis.
That’s a remarkable record.
It also makes Seattle’s current economic anxiety harder to dismiss — and its prosperity worth protecting. If Seattle’s performance disappoints, where exactly would you rather be? Growth brings problems, especially when poorly managed. But the alternative is worse.
We saw the aftermath firsthand when we visited Cleveland earlier this year. Its story is a reminder that prosperity isn’t permanent — and rebuilding an economy after decades of decline is a lot harder than keeping one healthy.
Much like Seattle today, Cleveland 75 years ago was a very successful city riding decades of strong economic and population growth, and home to some of that era’s Big Tech giants. The Cleveland Browns even dominated the 1950s NFL.
But Cleveland’s prosperity unraveled quickly.
The world changed. The Rust Belt started to rust. Employers closed down.
Cleveland’s population dropped 59% from its 1950 peak to 2020 — from 914,808 to 372,624 residents.
It went from one of the nation’s richest cities to one of the poorest. Seahawks fans take note: the Browns have never been to the Super Bowl.
When we visited Cleveland earlier this year, we asked everyone from the mayor to real estate developers to arts leaders what they wish they’d done differently and sought their advice for Seattle.
We learned a lot from a city hungry, united and focused on building prosperity for its residents.
Seattle rode the software boom to remarkable prosperity. Can it do the same in the AI era?
The warning signs are hard to ignore.
Amazon and Microsoft have cut more than 10,000 jobs across the Seattle metro area since 2023. Downtown office vacancy remains among the highest in the country. And the center of gravity for the AI boom is in the Bay Area, raising questions about Seattle’s ability to capture the next wave of growth.
The city’s economic report puts the challenge bluntly: “The version of the tech sector that drove the last wave of economic growth will not drive the next one.”
The report warns that Seattle’s next generation of startups may not be ready to replace the growth engines of the past. The risk isn’t just layoffs or empty office towers. It’s the company never founded, the midsize business squeezed by rising costs, or the engineer who leaves to build a startup somewhere else.
So how does Seattle prepare for its next economic chapter?
At its simplest, a city’s job is to attract people — and give them reasons to stay.
Population isn’t a perfect measure of prosperity, but it’s a useful proxy for a city’s appeal. People come for opportunity. They stay when the opportunities and quality of life are worth it. Growth brings challenges, but those are preferable to the alternative.
As Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb told us, “I envy problems around growth.”
Seattle’s population has grown nearly 40% since 2000.
But that growth is slowing as our economic engine sputters.
The Boeing Bust of the 1970s, when Seattle’s population fell 7% and unemployment hit 17%, is a reminder that what goes up can come down.
Today, cities compete globally for talent, entrepreneurs and employers. That competition will only intensify as populations age and immigration restrictions tighten.
The most talented workers and entrepreneurs can go where they see the greatest opportunity — and where they feel wanted.
Consider what Seattle’s last century might have looked like without three people: Bill Boeing, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Boeing helped turn Seattle into an aerospace powerhouse. Gates chose to move Microsoft from Albuquerque to the Seattle area to usher in the software boom. Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie, famously drove their Chevy Blazer from Texas to Seattle to start Amazon.
Each helped shape the region’s economic future. We can’t predict who the next generation of business builders will be. But does Seattle have the same pull today? Or are the people we need choosing Austin, Miami, San Francisco or somewhere else?
Attracting newcomers matters. So does keeping the people who are already here. Do the economic opportunities still justify the cost of living? Is Seattle still a place where people want to live, work and play?
Residents have plenty of reasons to question the deal: public safety, housing costs, homelessness, schools, government services and taxes. Do the positives still outweigh the negatives?
Decades of growth brought extraordinary people and companies to Seattle. Our best chance of building the next era of prosperity is to keep them here — and give them room to build what comes next.
Yet we risk losing people and businesses we can’t easily replace: talented workers, entrepreneurs, executives, inventors, technologists, engineering teams and global headquarters.
As Seattle’s mayor waves goodbye to departing business leaders, the city’s own Seawall report offers a blunt warning: “Headquarters and top-tier tech jobs are very hard to replace.”
The report makes the broader case for growth, too. Losing tech jobs and companies won’t make Seattle more equitable, it warns. “If they leave, Seattle won’t become more equal, it will just become poorer.”
There’s a practical reason for that. Seattle’s fiscal model depends on a growing economy.
More residents and businesses generate property and sales tax revenue without requiring higher tax rates on those already here. As the report puts it, “it is easier to distribute the benefits of a growing pie than a fixed one.”
That’s another way of saying that when government spending outpaces population growth, a stagnant economy leaves fewer options for paying the bills — a challenge we’ll revisit in the next post.
Thanks to Cleveland for reminding us prosperity is fragile, decline is real, and recovery can take generations.
Seattle’s next era of prosperity is ours to build — or squander.
In the next post, we’ll look at what Seattle needs to do to get the fundamentals right to ensure the city is a great place to live, work and play.
Amazon says it plans to hire more than 300,000 people for seasonal, part-time and full-time roles across its U.S. operations this holiday season, an increase of 20% from last year and its largest holiday hiring target on record.
The increase reflects a mix of factors, including new sites opening across the country as Amazon expands its operations network, a spokesperson said in response to questions.
Amazon is moving in the opposite direction from the rest of retail. Retailers added the fewest seasonal workers since 2008 last holiday season, and outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas expects even fewer this year, citing automation and uncertain holiday spending as tariffs keep prices high.
UPS plans to hire more than 100,000 seasonal workers, about 9% fewer than last year, according to Reuters, after cutting the volume it handles for Amazon, which now delivers most of its own packages. Target and Walmart haven’t announced national hiring goals.
Amazon’s sales volume has picked up this year. Worldwide paid units, a measure of items sold on Amazon, grew 17% year-over-year in the second quarter, up from 12% a year earlier, according to its second-quarter earnings release.
CEO Andy Jassy said in the earnings release that Amazon set record delivery speeds for Prime members in the first half of the year, with “over 40% more items delivered same-day or overnight.”
Amazon also said Tuesday that seasonal employees who work at least 30 hours a week will be eligible for healthcare from their first day, starting Jan. 1. Seasonal workers previously had to wait 90 days for coverage, meaning that many holiday hires could finish their seasonal jobs before they became eligible.
The change doesn’t apply to the upcoming peak season, but workers hired over the holidays who are still in qualifying roles on Jan. 1 will gain coverage that day, the company said.
Seasonal workers earn an average of $20 an hour. Full-time operations employees start at a minimum of $20 an hour, and average pay across Amazon’s operations workforce is nearly $24, following a pay increase Amazon announced last month.
The hiring push for Amazon’s fulfillment centers and delivery stations comes as the company shrinks its corporate workforce. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs in January, bringing its total reductions to about 30,000 since October 2025.
Amazon had about 1.6 million employees as of June 30, up 3% from a year earlier, excluding contractors and temporary workers. The company reports third-quarter results Oct. 29.
Thailand becomes the first country in Microsoft's 19-nation AI jobs initiative, linking AI education and workforce training with employer demand.
The post Thailand Becomes First to Launch Microsoft’s 19-Country AI Jobs Initiative appeared first on TechRepublic.
Thailand becomes the first country in Microsoft's 19-nation AI jobs initiative, linking AI education and workforce training with employer demand.
The post Thailand Becomes First to Launch Microsoft’s 19-Country AI Jobs Initiative appeared first on TechRepublic.
Vietnam’s FPT now tests entry-level applicants on practical AI skills, but the company has yet to disclose how candidates will be evaluated.
The post Vietnam’s FPT Adds AI Skills Test for New Hires, but Key Details Remain Unclear appeared first on TechRepublic.
Vietnam’s FPT now tests entry-level applicants on practical AI skills, but the company has yet to disclose how candidates will be evaluated.
The post Vietnam’s FPT Adds AI Skills Test for New Hires, but Key Details Remain Unclear appeared first on TechRepublic.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is bringing together leaders from Amazon, Spotify, the Port of Seattle, organized labor, technology, cleantech, small business and other sectors as part of a new task force focused on rebuilding and diversifying the city’s economy.
Wilson on Wednesday announced 18 members of the Resilient Seattle Economy Task Force, which will look for ways to remove barriers to business growth, attract and retain companies and improve the process of starting and operating a business in Seattle.
“I’m charging this task force with identifying where the City can make connections, remove barriers and provide support within individual industries and across our economy,” Wilson said. “We need to diversify our economy while expanding opportunities for local entrepreneurs and young people.”
The effort builds on the city’s recently released Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy report, which called for Seattle to diversify beyond its heavy reliance on large technology companies and focus on sectors including artificial intelligence, cleantech, maritime, life sciences and space.
That report found that companies with at least 100 employees accounted for 74.5% of net job growth in the Seattle metro area from 2014 to 2023, while mid-sized companies accounted for just 16.6%.
The economic challenges have also put a spotlight on Seattle’s tax structure. As GeekWire recently reported, Seattle lost roughly 24,000 jobs between March 2020 and March 2025 even as city tax collections continued to grow, shifting more of the tax burden onto businesses.
Wilson has responded in part by freezing JumpStart tax rates in her proposed 2027 budget, citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector.
The new task force will initially focus on downtown revitalization, business attraction and retention, cross-sector collaboration, and making it easier to open and operate a business. The task force also comes as Seattle’s business community has pressed City Hall for action on public safety, with dozens of regional CEOs recently calling for a 100-day plan with measurable goals and progress reports.
“Seattle is open for business,” said Beto Yarce, director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development.
The task force will hold industry-specific roundtables and listening sessions this year, with initial findings due in February 2027 and a final report expected in November 2027. Here’s a look at the task force members:
Apple's iPhone 4 was a pretty great smartphone, and a huge upgrade over the iPhone 3GS that came before it. But it wasn't without its problems, especially one that caused calls to drop if you held it wrong.
The post The Full iPhone 4 Antennagate Q&A Video Is Now Available After 16 Years first appeared on Redmond Pie.
Seattle’s economic engine is stalling, and downtown is taking the brunt of the hit.
Between 2024 and 2025, Seattle shed 18,065 total jobs, with a staggering 70% of those losses—13,000 jobs—coming directly from the city’s downtown core, according to a new report released by the Downtown Seattle Association.
In some ways, it’s a tale of two cities.
While Seattle proper shrank, neighboring Eastside tech hub Bellevue gained 5,375 jobs over the same timeframe, highlighting a shifting center of gravity within the Puget Sound region.
A lot of that growth in Bellevue, and decline in Seattle is coming from one company: Amazon.
The online retail and cloud computing powerhouse employed 15,700 workers in Bellevue at the end of 2025, making it the largest employer in Bellevue at 9.85% of the total workforce, according to the city’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. That’s up from just a few hundred employees in Bellevue nearly a decade ago.
Amazon employs about 49,000 people in Seattle proper, though the Puget Sound Business Journal noted this week that the company has shed office space in downtown Seattle and dramatically slowed employment in the city.
Other key findings from the Downtown Seattle Association report:
The latest findings build on a growing chorus of criticism regarding the city’s fiscal climate. A June analysis by the DSA argued that Seattle’s controversial “JumpStart” payroll expense tax—passed in 2020 and targeting major employers like Amazon—is backfiring by driving business across Lake Washington.
The June report highlighted that since 2020, downtown Seattle lost roughly 30,000 jobs and saw office building values plummet 48%, while Bellevue—which levies no comparable head tax—gained jobs and expanded commercial values by 7%.
Though JumpStart projects $388 million in revenue this year, about 70% of that relies on just 10 major companies, underscoring how heavily Seattle leans on a handful of tech giants.
City of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has consistently pushed back against blaming downtown’s struggles on any single tax, pointing to broader post-pandemic remote-work trends, high interest rates and national tech restructurings that affect cities nationwide. She credited JumpStart with saving the city from drastic service cuts during the pandemic and noted that Seattle’s recovery remains resilient.
However, in a sign that Mayor Wilson is paying close attention to tech-sector headwinds and shifting job patterns in the region, she last week proposed a $9.1 billion 2027 budget, which would erase a $175 million general fund deficit and cut nearly $50 million in spending while freezing JumpStart tax rates.
Citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector, the mayor’s freeze leaves the payroll tax untouched to offer big employers a period of tax stability, even as she continues directing JumpStart revenues beyond their original intent to cover core general fund operations.
“These were a set of taxes that may have provided some short-term gain to the city coffers, but are inflicting long-term pain,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes told GeekWire in an interview in June. “We predicted that at the time, and were sort of dismissed and ignored.”
DES MOINES, Wash. — Defense tech powerhouse Shield AI is establishing a massive advanced manufacturing hub in Washington state, tapping the Seattle region’s deep aerospace and tech roots to build a next-generation autonomous fighter jet called the X-BAT.
The project could transform the regional labor market: Shield AI says it expects to have 4,000 workers in the region by the early 2030s as it ramps up mass production of the AI-piloted, 26-foot long aircraft.
It marks a major expansion of advanced aerospace manufacturing in the Seattle region, bringing autonomous military aviation directly into Boeing’s backyard and cementing the state’s position at the center of the AI-defined defense era.
The San Diego-based company, valued at $12.7 billion following a $2 billion venture capital round earlier this year, is looking to complete construction on a 420,000-square-foot facility in Des Moines, Wash., just south of Seattle, next spring.
That physical footprint is expected to grow quickly. Armor Harris, senior vice president of aircraft at Shield AI, told GeekWire that the company is actively looking to add another 1 million square feet in the region to support its long-term manufacturing push.
Named X-Forge 3, the initial facility will serve as the primary manufacturing and engineering center for the X-BAT. It’s now under construction about 15 minutes south of Sea-Tac airport in the Des Moines Creek Business Park West, at 1800 S 216th St.
Developed by Panattoni, the site was selected by Shield AI midway through construction. The company is now taking it to completion, with Harris noting that they are “putting the roof on right now.”
Unveiled last year, the X-BAT is an AI-piloted strike fighter that takes off and lands vertically, carries up to 2,000-pound class weapons in internal bays, and is designed for a 1,000-nautical-mile combat radius — which, when it takes flight, would top the estimated 590 nautical mile combat radius of the Lockheed Martin F-35A.
An economic analysis released by the company estimates Shield AI’s X-BAT program will inject roughly $73 billion into Washington state’s economy over the next two decades as production scales toward full capacity. Projections provided by the company say up to 27,000 direct and indirect jobs — including suppliers — will be generated by the expansion by 2046.
“This is a large program,” said Harris in an interview with GeekWire. “Building a next generation fighter jet is no small endeavor, and with the amount of interest that we’ve seen, both from our U.S. government customers and from international customers, we could be looking at building these at rates greater than fighter jets have been built in a really long time.”
Harris said he expects the first X-BAT aircraft to roll off the line in Des Moines in 2028, with full production ramping up to about 150 aircraft per year by the early 2030s.
The company evaluated more than a dozen sites for the facility, and chose the Seattle area for a simple reason: talent.
Harris cited the region’s robust aerospace legacy, as well as technology giants like Amazon and Microsoft and a burgeoning space and satellite industry which has taken shape in recent years. A number of fast-growing and heavily funded defense tech companies — including Anduril, Armada and Nominal — have also established beachheads in the region in recent years.
He described the X-BAT as a “modern sixth-generation fighter jet” that’s essentially a “flying sensor suite,” ingesting information in real time in order to make lightning-fast decisions.
Building that type of aircraft takes a very specialized workforce, one that Harris said is rooted across technology, aerospace, artificial intelligence, materials science and advanced manufacturing. Those are major strengths of the Seattle area workforce.
“We’re able to tap into that existing lineage and not have to necessarily train a workforce from the ground up, which would be hard to do on the timelines we’re trying to execute,” said Harris, who is planning to relocate to Washington state from Dallas.
To support its ambitious production schedule, Shield AI is actively recruiting across both software engineering and specialized aerospace roles. The initial hiring push for the Des Moines facility spans autonomy developers, flight-control software engineers, composite technicians, and shop-floor assembly specialists.
In one job listing for an engineering manager to lead the X-BAT hardware test software team, the company notes that the ideal candidate “has personally built or led the development of automated hardware test systems used in production, manufacturing, qualification, or other high-consequence environments.”
In another Seattle area job listing for a staff fuel engineer, the company says it is looking for a someone with “strong thermofluid fundamentals, engineering judgment, and the ability to understand fuel system behavior across demanding aircraft operating conditions while serving as the focal point between propulsion, vehicle teams, suppliers, and flight operations.”
Pay across those engineering roles ranges from $169,000 to $300,000 annually, according to the company job postings.
The company currently lists more than 110 open roles in the Seattle area, including a dozen or more in categories such as avionics and electrical; mechanical and thermal; software and networks; and aerostructures.
Choosing Washington also allowed Shield AI to buck a pervasive defense industry trend: separating engineering teams from physical factory floors to shave down labor costs.
While shifting assembly lines to lower-cost regions can cut costs, Harris said that remote manufacturing introduces hidden operational friction when building complex, software-defined aircraft like the X-BAT.
“We fundamentally believe in the colocation of engineering and production is the fastest way to bring capability to our customers,” said Harris, adding that combining engineering and production in a common facility is “one of the secret sauces of Shield.”
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) — whose district includes Des Moines — welcomed Shield AI and the X-BAT manufacturing facility to King County.
“This hub will create high-quality jobs, strengthen Puget Sound’s expanding technology and aerospace sectors, and further diversify our local economy,” Smith said. “Reimagining aviation will have a rightful home here in Washington’s Ninth District.”
Katherine Caffrey, the city manager for City of Des Moines, welcomed the new jobs and economic investment in the community.
“Des Moines sits at the heart of the Puget Sound aerospace industry, and these jobs and this investment reflects exactly what we want Des Moines to be, a place where families can build strong careers close to home,” Caffrey said.
Shield AI officially introduced the X-BAT program to the public at an October 2025 event in Washington, D.C., unveiling the aircraft before an audience of military leaders, elected officials and defense industry partners.
At the time, Shield AI co-founder and president Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL, called X-BAT a “transformative, runway-independent aircraft” and noted that “airpower without runways is the holy grail of deterrence.”
That vision quickly gained momentum.
Last month, the U.S. Navy backed the program through an initial $50 million development contract, envisioning the autonomous fighter jets operating directly from destroyers, amphibious assault ships and converted cargo vessels to project long-range airpower without relying on traditional aircraft carriers.
That momentum grew internationally earlier this month, when Shield AI signed a five-year letter of intent with Polish defense companies PGZ and WZL-2. Under the framework, the companies are exploring plans to help build, supply, and repair the X-BAT, a partnership that could give NATO allies a fighter jet capable of operating even if local airfields and runways are destroyed or non-existent.
The X-BAT launches and lands vertically using a specialized Launch and Recovery Vehicle —a mobile trailer that erects the jet vertically, allowing it to be towed on interstate highways or loaded onto cargo ships to set up a field launch pad in minutes.
Harris noted that while a final site selection for manufacturing the LRV trailers has not been made, expanding production into the Puget Sound region remains on the table given the area’s deep manufacturing base.
In addition to the mammoth manufacturing facility in Des Moines, Shield AI announced that it is expanding its presence in both Texas and Kansas.
In Frisco, Texas, the company operates its X-Forge 1 site to handle core prototyping, software integration, and initial engineering for the autonomous fighter. Meanwhile, at X-Forge 2 in Newton, Kansas, Shield AI has expanded its airport footprint to serve as the program’s dedicated flight test, customer acceptance and maintenance hub.
Shield AI expects its X-Forge 2 site in Kansas to support approximately 1,800 regional jobs by the early 2030s, growing to 2,900 positions by 2046 with a projected $5 billion in regional economic impact over that period.
Addressing the cross-country logistics of moving completed aircraft from the Puget Sound assembly line to Kansas for flight testing, Harris explained that the X-BAT can be easily moved via the existing transportation corridors.
“The X-BAT is designed to be road transportable,” he said. “So we’re taking advantage of that.”
Beyond the immediate manufacturing logistics, Harris views the multi-billion-dollar expansion as a major long-term validation of the region’s industrial relevance.
“There’s been a strong narrative of like, ‘Hey, all the jobs are migrating elsewhere,’ and I think this is a big win for the region to capture a major program from a rapidly growing company like this,” Harris said. “This can be the backbone for years of growth in the future.”
That’s a message that Gov. Bob Ferguson is getting behind, saying Washington state is a place where “big ideas take flight.”
“Shield AI’s decision to build its new X-BAT manufacturing facility here is another sign that the future of aerospace is being built in Washington,” Ferguson said in a statement. “We welcome Shield AI and the thousands of good-paying jobs this investment will bring.”
Login