Cisco Systems announced companywide layoffs last week in a step it framed as necessary to “win in the AI era.”
How many, if any, of its roughly 4,000 job cuts will affect Cisco’s sizable Research Triangle Park workforce remains unclear. The Bay Area tech company declined to provide site-specific layoff numbers to The News & Observer. Cisco also wouldn’t disclose its current local headcount (in March 2025, the company had told The N&O it employed more than 4,950 workers at its western Wake County campus.)
Private businesses are entitled to withhold a lot of employment data from the public. But one state database offers glimpses into staff fluctuations at the Triangle’s biggest hirers. Once a month, the N.C. Department of Commerce requires every business, nonprofit, government agency, and school in the state that pays unemployment insurance taxes to report their local jobs figures…