New state data is showing just how deeply layoffs have hit the Seattle-area technology sector in 2026, with thousands of workers losing jobs and highly experienced professionals often finding that the path back into the industry is taking far longer than it once did.
KREM 2 News shared a report from Seattle sister station KING 5 by reporter Heidi Kirk, who found that layoff notices filed through late September covered 6,679 workers in King County this year, with 4,477 of those losses coming from the information sector.
That means roughly two-thirds of the workers affected by the notices came from the part of the economy that includes many of the region’s large technology companies, and the total has already surpassed the full-year information-sector layoff numbers from both 2024 and 2025.
Small Layoffs Are Adding Up
Kirk reported that the scale of the cuts can be easy to miss because many companies are not eliminating thousands of jobs at once…