The tech layoffs 2026 market asks whether the information sector sheds more workers in 2026 than the 447,000 it shed in 2025. It is a binary Kalshi contract settled on federal JOLTS data, not a private tracker headline count. Through June the 2026 tally already stood at 335,000, three quarters of the bar with half the year gone. The board carries roughly $31.4M in cumulative volume and resolves March 1, 2027. The live board above carries the current price.
The tech layoffs 2026 contract distills a year of churn into one comparison. It does not ask how many people lost jobs at any single company, or whether Meta or Amazon ran another round. It asks whether the information sector as a whole, as the federal government counts it, records more layoffs and discharges across all of 2026 than the 447,000 it recorded across all of 2025. One number against another number. Yes or No.
That framing matters because the private trackers and the official data tell different stories. A site that aggregates announced cuts is counting press releases. The federal JOLTS survey counts the actual flow of layoffs and discharges across thousands of employers, reported monthly and revised afterward. This contract settles on the JOLTS series, which is why a loud quarter of announcements does not automatically push it to Yes.
The information sector is a specific federal classification. It bundles software publishers, data processing and hosting, telecom, broadcasting, and web search and publishing into one bucket. When people say tech layoffs they usually mean a subset of that, so a wave concentrated in software still has to move the whole bucket to matter.
The bar is fixed and already known. Information-sector layoffs and discharges totaled 447,000 in 2025, up from 395,000 in 2024 and 399,000 in 2023. The 2025 figure is the exact line 2026 has to clear, and it will not move again.
What has moved is the 2026 pace. Through June, the sector had logged 335,000 layoffs and discharges, roughly 75% of the full-year bar with half the year still to run. That is a monthly average near 55,800 against roughly 37,300 across 2025. January printed 71,000 and June printed 63,000. To settle Yes, the back half of 2026 needs only another 112,000; the back half of 2025 by itself produced 227,000. That asymmetry, not the news cycle, is what the price on the live board above reflects.
For No to hit, the second half of 2026 would have to run at roughly half the pace of the second half of 2025, and the monthly figures already published would have to survive revision without moving up. JOLTS is a survey, revisions run in both directions, and the annual comparison is only final once the last month is in. The market treats that combination as unlikely rather than impossible.
This is also why the automation and cost-discipline narratives do not map cleanly onto the contract. A company that replaces roles with software still books those exits as layoffs and discharges, which pushes toward Yes. A company that slows hiring without cutting does nothing to the count at all. The contract measures one specific flow through the labor prediction markets board, not the general mood of the industry.
The tech layoffs 2026 market closes March 1, 2027, once full-year 2026 data is on the board. It settles Yes if information-sector layoffs and discharges across all of 2026 exceed 447,000, and No if the total lands at or below that figure. The settlement source is the FRED series JTU5100LDL, Layoffs and Discharges: Information, published monthly, not seasonally adjusted, and subject to revision. Kalshi originally listed the contract against a 494,000 floor, which was the wrong 2025 value. The exchange corrected the floor to 447,000 and published a rule paying $1.00 to positions open as of March 13, 2026 at 5:00 PM ET if the final count lands between the two numbers.
Labor-market stress rarely trades in isolation. For the broadest version of the same question, see the US recession 2026 odds, and for the labor-displacement angle specifically, the Citrini scenario 2028 market prices a multi-condition version of the same thesis at roughly $25.9M in volume. The sector-specific downturn read sits on the AI industry downturn 2026 market. All three trade alongside this contract in the economics prediction markets hub, where the full slate of labor, rate, and growth questions lives. For the current price on this specific contract, the live board above is the source of truth.
Resolves March 1, 2027. The contract settles Yes if total layoffs and discharges in the information sector across all of 2026 exceed 447,000, and No if the total lands at or below that figure. The source of truth is the FRED series JTU5100LDL, Layoffs and Discharges: Information, drawn from the federal JOLTS survey, not a private layoffs aggregator or a press-release tally. The series is published monthly, is not seasonally adjusted, and is revised after initial release, so the market waits for the finalized full-year count rather than resolving on a partial-year pace. Each share pays $1 on the correct side and $0 on the other. Kalshi listed the contract against a 494,000 floor in error; the corrected floor is 447,000, and the exchange published a rule paying $1.00 to positions open as of March 13, 2026 at 5:00 PM ET should the final count land between the two figures.
As of August 17, 2026 the Yes side trades at 92c on Kalshi, an implied 92% chance that 2026 information-sector layoffs exceed the 447,000 recorded in 2025. The contract has held a 91c to 92c band for the past week across roughly $31.4M in cumulative volume.
It resolves March 1, 2027, once full-year 2026 JOLTS data is finalized. It settles Yes if information-sector layoffs and discharges in 2026 exceed 447,000 and No if the total comes in at or below that figure.
The contract is listed on Kalshi under the KXLAYOFFSYINFO series. There is no Polymarket counterpart, so the Kalshi book is the only price on this question and there is no cross-platform spread to compare.
It measures the FRED series JTU5100LDL, Layoffs and Discharges: Information, summed across all of 2026 against the 2025 total of 447,000. The information sector covers software, telecom, data hosting, broadcasting, and web publishing, so the whole bucket has to move, not one company.
Watch the monthly JOLTS releases from July 2026 onward: only 112,000 more layoffs are needed to clear the bar, against 227,000 in the same months of 2025. Revisions to already-published months are the other live variable ahead of the March 2027 resolution.