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In December, Maersk added staff at scale while guiding to just 2 to 4% container growth. Sanctions, tariffs and unstable routes are making global trade harder to run, and that cost is landing in the workforce before it shows up in earnings.
Sanctions, tariffs and reshoring are one story: the world is getting more expensive to coordinate. Companies still built for cheap globalization carry the risk, and it shows up in their org charts before it reaches earnings.
Oracle is cutting jobs while spending tens of billions on AI data centers. Those are the same story. As infrastructure becomes the main asset, labor gets repriced, and the shift in who Oracle kept and who it let go started showing months before the layoffs.
The Real Middle East Shock
Between February 2025 and 2026, Blackstone grew headcount 34%, EY-Parthenon 23% and Alvarez & Marsal 21%, while McKinsey and Accenture shrank. Enterprise AI is being deployed through sponsor cost mandates, and that decides which software revenue holds up.
How the largest employer in America stopped hiring for growth