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The Oracle campus along Lady Bird Lake in Austin, pictured in 2021. The company recently announced a massive round of layoffs tied to AI investments.<\/p>\n
Ricardo Brazziell\/Ricardo B. Brazziell \/ American-<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the tech workforce, creating new roles<\/a> while also driving layoffs across the industry \u2014 and Texas, a\u00a0major tech hub<\/a>, is lagging behind most other states in AI-related job listings.<\/p>\n Wing Assistant,<\/a> a virtual assistant and jobs company, scoured AI-related job listings in all 50 states, determining that Texans earn an average of $129,066 per year in the industry across 72 job listings. Despite the six-figure salary, Texas ranked just 36th overall.<\/p>\n New York AI workers make an average of $182,000 across 102 job listings, with the maximum salary found for the state being $412,500. North Dakota ranked last, with AI workers making an average of $94,000 per year across 32 job listings. Washington had the most AI job listings with 114 and an average salary of $152,930.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n As companies continue to invest heavily in artificial intelligence, layoffs have accelerated across the tech industry, including in Austin.<\/p>\n The U.S. has seen about 65,357 AI-related job cuts in 2026, according to a recent report by UK-based comparison agency TradingPlatforms. Globally, roughly 39,088 layoffs since the start of the year have been directly linked to AI implementation and automation, the study says.<\/p>\n Americans are increasingly growing concerned that their jobs could soon be eliminated by AI.<\/p>\n A March poll by Quinnipiac University<\/a> found that 70% of Americans believe AI advancements will lead to a decrease in job opportunities, with 30% of Americans saying they think their own jobs will soon be rendered obsolete.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For several years, locally-based Gauntlet AI<\/a> has put on a 10-week program for software engineers to \u201cretrain\u201d for the AI era. The all-expenses paid training in Austin has graduated about 300 people so far who are placed at new AI software engineering dedicated roles in Austin or across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n College and graduate schools are not adapting fast enough to help software engineers retain their jobs in the current market, Chief Technology Officer Ash Tilawat told the American-Statesman.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gauntlet AI is a local organization that retrains software engineers for artificial intelligence, with the goal of helping avoid AI-driven layoffs. The organization has graduated 300 engineers from its 10-week, all-expenses paid retraining program.<\/p>\n Provided by Gauntlet AI<\/p>\n \u201cWhat makes you valuable is your creativity,\u201d Tilawat said. \u201cAI is always going to be the general consensus of knowledge around the world. So once you become AI native, you unlock that creativity, intelligence, knowledge and information that makes you more valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Layoffs persist as Big Tech ups AI spending<\/p>\n One of the largest contributors of AI-driven layoffs in 2026 is Austin-based Oracle Corp.\u00a0<\/p>\n The AI infrastructure company, which moved its headquarters to Austin in 2020, notified more than 25,000 employees via email<\/a> last month that they would be laid off. Oracle, like many other tech companies, is spending billions on data center development to support the growth of AI. The company said the layoffs were tied to reorganization and reinvestments in other businesses, including its cloud infrastructure and data center efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta announced plans to cut 10% of its global workforce<\/a> as it continued rampant AI investments.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we\u2019re making,\u201d Janelle Gale, Meta\u2019s chief people officer, said in the memo.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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