Companies Keep Slashing Employees’ Benefits for the Worst Reasons

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Lauren GoodeBusinessMay 15, 2026 11:00 AMCompanies Keep Slashing Employees’ Benefits for the Worst ReasonsWorkers are getting worse health care, parental leave, and retirement benefits, showing once and for all that your job doesn’t love you back. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Save this story Save this storyEmployee benefits are in the spotlight this week, and that’s because of three recent stories about US companies cutting back on non-wage compensations for workers. A Texas tech consulting firm with a forgettable name—TTEC—suddenly became a lot more memorable when it suspended its discretionary 401(k) match program for 16,000 employees through at least the end of 2026.

According to Business Insider, which viewed an internal TTEC memo, the company plans to invest in AI certifications, AI tools and training, and automation, among other things. The auditing and consulting giant Deloitte is also reportedly slashing benefits for some workers starting next year. This includes reducing PTO, halving parental leave, and eliminating a $50,000 reimbursement for family planning services such as adoption, surrogacy, and IVF.

Technical Details

San Francisco-based Zoom, meanwhile, has made a smaller-scale change and reduced its parental leave for employees from 22 weeks to 18 weeks for birthing parents. So what’s the driving force behind this? And are there more cuts to come?

The latter is impossible to answer, and the former is unfortunately more complicated than “corporate ghouls go AI. ”First off, “what Deloitte did is completely unconscionable,’” says Joan C. Williams, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, the author of several books on work culture and class dynamics, and an oft-cited scholar on these topics.

The consulting firm is cutting the benefits of a specific class of internal workers—in admin, IT support, and finance—while leaving intact benefits for people in client-facing roles. An affected worker will see their parental leave cut from 16 weeks to just eight weeks. “It treats people differently based on the type of job they’re in, and cutting any mother down to eight weeks of paid leave is just outlandish,” Williams says.

Industry Implications

“When labor is tight, employers are more generous. But once the power shifts, the benefits contract. ”AI certainly is a convenient excuse these days for any corporate decision that harms workers.

But the impetus here is also the cost of the benefits themselves. Earlier this year subsidies from the Affordable Care Act lapsed, and people began dropping out of health care plans entirely. Insurers have cited this as one reason they’ve raised premiums.

Sarahjane Sacchetti, a former top executive at benefits administration companies Cleo and Collective Health, who is working on a new health care initiative, told me that the costs of employer-sponsored health plans have increased significantly over the past five years.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.