The real reason why thousands of people are losing their jobs…

10 Feb 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:52

In this monologue, Dan Novaes explains how major tech companies, especially Amazon, aggressively hired millions of workers and expanded infrastructure during the COVID‑19 pandemic under the assumption that heightened online demand would be permanent. When pandemic conditions normalized and consumer behavior shifted back to in‑person activities, demand for e‑commerce and digital services fell, leaving these firms with far more staff than needed. Amazon alone cut 27,000 jobs, and other firms such as Meta, Twitter, and Microsoft have also announced large layoffs. The simultaneous release of hundreds of thousands of skilled workers into the labor market has caused salaries to drop sharply and competition for positions to intensify, turning a previously tight job market into a rapid collapse. Novaes attributes the crisis to a collective miscalculation: companies hired for a temporary boom without planning for a return to normal demand.

Chapters

Amazon hired aggressively during the pandemic. Millions of new workers, new warehouses, rapid expansion. Then the pandemic ended. People went back to offices. Online shopping slowed down. Amazon suddenly had way too many workers and not enough work. So they fired 27,000 people just like that. But here's the deeper story. Amazon hired based on pandemic demand they thought was permanent. They didn't plan for normalcy. They miscalculated. This is happening across tech Meta fired thousands. Twitter fired thousands. Microsoft is laying off workers. Every company that overhired during the boom is now in panic mode. The problem is they all hired at the same time. So now hundreds of thousands of skilled workers are hitting the job market at once. Salaries are collapsing, competition is brutal. What looked like a job market shortage two years ago turned into a job market collapse overnight. Companies thought the future was always going to be like 2021. It wasn't. And now people are paying the price.