It’s a kaleidoscope out there. Depending on who you ask, it seems you get a different perspective on the Product job market. Data from LinkedIn and Lenny’s Newsletter from early 2026 shows Product Manager jobs worldwide are up 12%, the highest level reported in three years. In forums and online communities—for example, over on r/productmanagement—PMs are raising alarms about “ghost positions”, year-long job searches, and continued layoffs.
Surveys show a 145% net rise in PM roles since 2019, with the caveat that the market has dipped 28% since its peak four years ago. Hiring is up, but somehow down at the same time, unless you’re looking at it sideways, in which case you’re probably a Product Builder or a Portfolio PM.
In 2026, the role is now at a turning point: AI has transformed traditional product teams and accelerated organisational downsizing. AI PMs are expected to competently perform the tasks of a small team while staying up to date on agentic flows, all while fearing they could be next on the chopping block when the industry contracts again.
So, in this deep-dive, we unpack the data on PM layoffs to see which sectors, seniority levels, and countries are most affected. We’ll also look at new opportunities for PMs, and get real on the ROIs for companies who tried to replace workers with AI, all to get a well-rounded picture of the job market in mid-2026.
What does the data show?
Numbers collected by employment data company Live Data Technologies show revealUS tech companies have indeed shed PM headcounts since the 2022 peak. That’s a 28% decrease, or nearly a third of roles gone as of June 2026.
Management layers were most affected, with VP-level PMs down 38% in an attempt to flatten org hierarchies and consolidate "manager of managers" types of roles. The trend goes on, with directors down 35% and managers down 31% from peak. Managers actually represent the largest reduction in absolute terms, with around 4000 roles gone. This is consistent with initiatives across Big Tech to reduce “manager ratio" (i.e. the number of engineers a PM supports).
While not totally immune to sweeping role reductions, IC staff and C-Suite level Product roles went down by only 30% and 24%, respectively. CPO/Head of Product roles contracted slightly but remained generally well protected. The most resilient cohort were Senior ICs, who were retained longer than managers and only saw a decrease of 21% from 2022.
Even at the most protected level, roughly one in five Product people were out of a role by mid-2026. But if there’s one silver lining here, it’s that, despite the cuts, Senior Staff PMs held on for longer than all of their other peers. This shows that, despite efforts to lean out org structures, companies still value experienced individual contributors. If you are a PM who’s built trust, expertise, and a modicum of influence at your current company, this might be a good time to dig in your heels, not change jobs.
2026 PM exits could rival industry record high
Now, over to PM departures. This includes both layoffs and voluntary exits, but we can see a similar pattern emerge. Around ~174,000 senior product and marketing leaders left their roles between 2022 and 2025, with almost half (46% or just over 80,000) of exits happening at Director level or above. Managers still had the highest volume of departures, but senior leadership got disproportionately thinned out.
Looking at sectors, Computer Software saw the highest absolute number of exits (90,000), followed by Marketing & Advertising (82,000), IT Services (74,000), and Financial Services (73,000).
2025 foreshadowed this trend with 122,549 total layoffs across tech. Product Manager was one of the most affected roles (together with software engineers and developers, QA engineers, project managers and non-engineers like HR & recruitment). The year was marked by mass layoff events: Microsoft eliminated 15,000 roles, Amazon 14,000, Salesforce 8,000, while Workday let go of 8.5% of its workforce and Dell an entire 10%.
Things are speeding up in 2026. In the first six months alone, companies cut more roles than during all of last year: 150,000+ workers laid off across 500+ organisations. At this rate, some predictions estimate 2026 could rival 2023's record high 262,000 layoffs industry-wide.
AI automation was the main reason for letting people go, cited by 55% of companies. This isn’t exactly a surprise, and we’ve already looked at how AI is restructuring product teams in our deep dive from last month. 60% of workers surveyed reported a reduction in headcount, tenure is rising at leadership levels, while companies are prioritising internal consolidation and promoting from inside the organisation.
The ROI of AI layoffs
Companies citing AI as the reason behind mass layoffs expected to see a boost in performance coupled with lower spending. The resulting savings were supposed to appeal to both shareholders and the stock market. The dominant narrative was, overwhelmingly, that early adopters win. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI report found that 88% of organisations used AI in at least one aspect of their work. Consolidating teams and replacing human employees with automated processes was simply a logical next step.
Nine out of ten companies who publicly announced AI-motivated layoffs have underperformed the S&P 500 by about 60 percentage points, even after seeing an initial surge. After laying off 30,000 people via email, Oracle’s stock briefly went up 7.5% before settling back at pre-layoff levels. Block actually saw a 6% decrease after letting go of 40% of its workers.
As of June 2026, the market is starting to see AI-motivated layoffs as a sign of deeper trouble within an organisation. Even with recent advancements in model capabilities, the reason doesn’t seem to stick anymore. Pro-AI VC Marc Andreessen recently said he believes AI is just a “silver bullet excuse” for cuts that are actually about mismanagement or overstaffing.
More recently, companies have begun hiring back people. A poll found over a third (32.7%) of organisations that tried to replace their workers with AI had already rehired between 25% to 50% of the roles they initially let go.
Where PMs can go from here
There is some good news, too. Reports released in mid-2026 show PM job openings are trending upward.
They’re now the highest they’ve been in three years, up 75% from a low point in late 2022/early 2023. Engineering roles also rose 78%, shadowed by a surge in tech recruiter positions, while AI roles are absolutely booming and up 237%. A few big tech companies, predominantly based in the Bay Area, are leading the charge: 32% of all AI roles currently open are based there.
A level breakdown reveals senior experience is still the safest bet. The bands experiencing the highest all-round growth were Senior PMs, leadership roles (Director/VP/CPO), and Senior ICs. This could be an overcorrection of the recent senior-level layoffs, but it’s too early to know for sure.
Across Europe and the UK, almost two thirds (around 72%) of new PM job openings are mid-level, 16% senior, with barely any entry-level roles. Growing markets like India reflect this trend, with Senior PM roles up 87% compared to Junior roles at just 16%.
Here’s a fun plot twist: the European Economic Area (EEA) is emerging as one of the most progressive markets for remote PMs. In late 2025, 30% of all openings were fully remote, 50% were hybrid, and only 20% required a full-time office presence. These figures are expected to grow in 2026. This encourages EU-based PMs to broaden their job hunt from city-wide to all over the EEA.
In the US, on the other hand, remote roles are more of a nice-to-have, with only a small percent being fully remote. The majority of PM hirings—especially AI PM—tend to cluster around hubs like California, New York, Washington, Texas, and Massachusetts.
Our takeaway
The problem with automating entire teams is twofold: a misunderstanding of which tasks AI can perform combined with a push to use the technology even where it doesn’t help and actually hurts. A Guardian investigation from earlier this year revealed employees felt pressure to use AI at the expense of doing their jobs efficiently. One described it as “trying to AI [her] way out of a problem that AI caused”. Another, who had been a software engineer at Amazon for over a decade, said he felt like practices from the warehouse and driver side of the company were being expanded to now include white collar workers, too.
Though AI can write code, build prototypes, come up with product designs, and make shipping quicker, that doesn’t mean a net improvement to any of these processes. Without Product professionals involved at every step, armed with experience, knowledge, and an understanding of nuance, the process breaks down. The relationship with the customer breaks down. And so far we’ve yet to see a successful product with zero customers.
We could be seeing this realisation sweep across Product in real time with the recent upswing in PM hiring. It’s too early to tell. But what we do know is that, no matter the employment situation, portfolio size or seniority level, PMs are a vital part of the process.
They’re also indispensable to AI adoption. As Product Leader Michael Hirsch explains, Product Managers “already translate between stakeholders who see the world differently. The AI adoption gap between executives and teams is the same work, applied to the most urgent organisational challenge most companies face right now.”
We’d like to round this out with some advice we received from a Mind the Product community member, writer and content specialist Beth McLoughlin. “I think we do measure ourselves by what we do,” she said about being laid off, “and it can be our identity, so losing that feels very destabilising, quite apart from fears about financial survival.”
However, it’s important to have empathy for ourselves, while staying practical: “Connect with others who have been there. Not only will they have practical advice, but it really helps to acknowledge that most of us have been made redundant at some time. There isn't something invisible and permanent that separates the employed from the jobless, generally speaking.”
