Manufacturing Dive first spotted the bloodletting through updated Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings. Most of the carnage is hitting California and Oregon, with nearly 2,000 staff at the Folsom and Santa Clara sites sent packing with their belongings in recycled photocopy boxes since the second week of July.

Oregon is seeing even worse. Revised filings show 2,392 roles at Hillsboro and Aloha are being wiped out, making it one of the largest tech layoffs the state has ever seen. These cuts began around 11 July, gutting engineering, technical and admin teams alike.

The misery is not confined to the West Coast. In Arizona, Intel ramped up layoffs in Chandler from 170 to almost 700 workers, according to local broadcaster KJZZ. Austin, Texas, took a hit, with 110 roles axed at Intel’s campus there by mid-July.

Those shown the door will get nine weeks’ severance plus benefits, along with between four and eight weeks’ notice. Small comfort when you’ve just been kicked out of a job.

This is all part of a brutal restructuring plan unveiled in April by Intel chief executive officer Lip‑Bu Tan. He wants to kill off more than 20 per cent of Chipzilla’s global workforce to save $500 million in operating costs this year and another $1 billion in 2026. At the time, Tan claimed the goal was to “streamline management and rebuild an engineering-driven culture.”

Intel's purge follows a grim trend of big tech layoffs in 2025. Microsoft recently dumped 9,000 staff, roughly four per cent of its workforce. CrowdStrike booted 500 people in May, while Google gutted hundreds from its Platforms & Devices group in April.

Meanwhile, the industry is fretting over whether artificial intelligence will do even more damage to jobs. In May, Anthropic chief executive officer Dario Amodei warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar roles within five years, pushing US unemployment to as high as 20 per cent.

The cuts keep coming, and no one in Chipzilla’s empire seems safe.