I recently watched a video on this and wanted to verify for myself. Microsoft was specifically called out, so I looked into it. According to their 2024 annual report: "As of June 30, 2024, we employed approximately 228,000 people on a full-time basis, 126,000 in the U.S. and 102,000 internationally."
And according to their 2025 report: "As of June 30, 2025, we employed approximately 228,000 people on a full-time basis, 125,000 in the U.S. and 103,000 internationally."
Same head count, after several rounds of layoffs, with 1,000 of the jobs shifting to international markets.
And according to the Times of India, Microsoft was approved for 5,189 H-1B visas in the first half of 2025. The second half numbers are not public yet, but if we assume it stayed course, then that is 10,378 American workers displaced by the visa program alone, plus the 1,000 moved to other countries, totaling 11,378 American jobs transferred to other countries and immigrants.
And that's just one tech giant, they are far from alone in using this strategy.
AI is expensive, so maybe we can say AI caused this, but these companies are also making record breaking profits at the same time. So my conclusion is: these companies get to use and develop AI, while cutting costs by switching to using foreign workers, and still have change to spare. Of course their fellow tech giant friends and others will follow suit. That's a huge win for these companies. Money coming in is up and money going out is down. Unfortunately that means the American workers suffer.
It's probably a good time to plug JoBound. They find more US remote software engineering jobs than any other platform and far faster. That means you see more opportunities and get seen more often. Try it out!