Barclays to Cut About 5,000 Jobs This Year in an AI-Linked Cost Drive

This is not a rescue cut. Barclays is shrinking its workforce because years of technology investment, now including artificial intelligence at scale, let it run the same bank with fewer people — and it is saying so on the record.

Barclays said on Thursday, Oct. 22, that about 5,000 jobs will go across the bank this year, roughly 5% of its workforce, as technology including artificial intelligence reduces the staff it needs and lowers fixed costs. The bank said in a presentation alongside its third-quarter results that the cost savings are expected to impact around 5,000 staff, or 5% of its total headcount, in 2026. Barclays employed about 93,000 people globally at the end of 2025. The workforce news landed on the same morning as the earnings print: third-quarter pretax profit rose 12% to £2.3 billion, just below forecasts, alongside a new £500 million share buyback.

Support functions take about 60% of the cuts

The detail came from the bank's finance chief. Chief financial officer Anna Cross told reporters that around 60% of the overall job cuts will impact staff in support functions such as developers, "including fewer developers as AI makes people more productive." The investment bank will also be affected, she said, though no division-by-division breakdown was given. On timing, about 1,000 roles have already gone — the bank cut 1,000 employees in the first half of this year — and a further 4,000 reductions are due in the third and fourth quarters, completing the program by the end of the year.

AI is the icing, not the cake

Chief executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan was careful to put artificial intelligence in its place. "We will employ AI at scale, but AI is the icing on the cake, not the cake," he said on a call with journalists. "You need to do the infrastructure builds to get the benefits of AI." The bank's framing is broader than any single tool: it is simplifying its organization and structurally shrinking its cost base to free up capacity to invest elsewhere in the business, and Cross said total cost cuts in the year to date have run at roughly double the level of the last two years.

The cost actions are already in the numbers

The program is not just an announcement — it is already moving through the accounts. Barclays implemented technology-enabled job reductions in the third quarter and booked structural cost actions of £201 million in the period, with a further £300 million planned for the final three months of the year. Those booked actions are the program's price tag in the results, separate from the recurring savings a smaller workforce is meant to deliver over time: the test is whether a workforce about 5% smaller holds service and controls together while the savings compound.

What is still not known

Plenty of detail is still missing. Barclays has not, in the reporting so far, broken the 5,000 down by geography or by business beyond the support-functions share and the investment bank also being affected, and no consultation or union detail has been reported. What readers can hold the bank to is dated and specific: about 4,000 more reductions by the end of the fourth quarter, on top of the 1,000 already gone in the first half. Whether the remaining cuts land on that timetable — and whether the bank quantifies the savings they produce — is the next check.