Wall Street’s most storied investment bank is overhauling the way it manages its workforce — and the changes could ripple across the financial industry.
Goldman Sachs, one of the most influential financial institutions on Wall Street, is preparing to launch a new round of job cuts beginning in April 2026. But this time, the approach looks markedly different from anything the firm has done before. Rather than conducting its signature annual mass reduction, the bank is pivoting to a series of smaller, rolling, performance-focused layoffs that could reshape how it manages talent for years to come.
A Departure From the Annual “Spring Cleaning”
For years, Goldman Sachs employees have operated under the quiet understanding that spring brings more than warmer weather — it brings cuts. The firm has long conducted what it internally calls a “Strategic Resource Assessment,” or SRA, a once-a-year culling of underperforming employees that typically eliminates between 1% and 3% of its global workforce. In some years, the cuts have been steeper: as recently as March 2025, the bank planned to cut between 3% and 5% of its staff, amounting to roughly 1,395 jobs, in an annual review process.
Now, Goldman Sachs is abandoning that model — at least for this spring. The bank is ditching its annual SRA culling and replacing it with a series of smaller, rolling layoffs beginning in April and continuing through the summer, according to multiple people familiar with the situation who spoke to Business Insider.
The scale of the upcoming cuts is expected to be modest. Goldman Sachs plans to cut a small number of underperforming staff in April, according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters. Importantly, the cuts are not part of its regular annual culling dubbed internally as the “strategic resource assessment.”
Giving Managers the Wheel
The most significant aspect of this shift isn’t just the timing — it’s the structure. The shift hands divisional leaders more control over timing, letting them move on staffers they consider poor performers without waiting months for a centralized firmwide review.
This decentralized approach represents a fundamental rethinking of how the firm handles underperformance. Rather than having Human Resources and senior leadership coordinate one sweeping assessment, individual business-unit heads will now have the autonomy to make timely, targeted decisions about their teams. The result is a faster, more agile talent management process — one that mirrors how many technology companies have operated for years.
These rolling cuts are expected to extend through the summer, with significantly fewer total layoffs anticipated in 2026 compared to previous years. The cuts are also far-reaching in scope: they are expected to reach every corner of the bank, from its investment banking division to its growing asset and wealth management unit.
The Official Response: Business as Usual
Goldman Sachs has been careful not to frame the changes as anything extraordinary. “Regular, consistent headcount management is nothing out of the ordinary for a public company,” a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said. “We are constantly assessing our performance and talent across divisions.”
That messaging is consistent with how the firm has historically talked about its annual talent reviews — downplaying the drama while quietly trimming its ranks. But the structural departure from the SRA model suggests that behind the scenes, something more deliberate is underway.
Notably, one person with direct knowledge of the plan told Business Insider that a more traditional SRA could still occur later in the year, consistent with past practice, meaning the spring process will look markedly different from prior years — but the annual review may not disappear entirely.
A Broader Trend Across Corporate America
Goldman Sachs is not acting in a vacuum. Across Wall Street and beyond, major institutions are taking a harder look at their headcount as artificial intelligence tools reshape what it means to be productive in a knowledge-based industry.
Morgan Stanley, for example, recently let go of about 2,500 people — around 3% of its workforce — across all divisions. HSBC has also been exploring cuts, particularly in non-client-facing roles, as it deepens its reliance on AI. The financial sector is clearly entering a new era of workforce recalibration.
Goldman Sachs management said during a January earnings call that the bank had momentum heading into 2026, driven by rising client activity and technology-enabled scale across the franchise. Chairman and CEO David Solomon also said during the call that Goldman Sachs’ next operating chapter centers on artificial intelligence as a productivity engine. Chief Financial Officer Denis Coleman reinforced that focus, noting that productivity initiatives are central to the bank’s efficiency agenda.
That framing is important context for the layoffs. While Goldman Sachs has not officially linked AI adoption to these particular job cuts, the broader institutional direction is clear: technology is becoming central to how the bank operates, and that has implications for headcount over time.
AI Looms in the Background
Goldman Sachs has been one of the more forward-thinking Wall Street institutions when it comes to AI integration. The bank was among the first to demonstrate what an AI agent could look like in a banking context, and its executives have consistently pointed to AI as a long-term efficiency driver.
The company has warned that as it adopts more AI, another round of layoffs could hit in 2026. Still, it is worth noting that the April cuts are being framed explicitly around performance, not technology displacement. Goldman’s own analysts have also urged caution about overclaiming AI as a driver of corporate layoffs: the bank has noted that “while AI may be increasingly considered in workforce decisions, clear evidence of layoffs directly motivated by AI remains limited,” and that the more likely driver for many companies is cutting costs the old-fashioned way.
For now, Goldman’s official position is that this is a personnel management decision, not a restructuring triggered by automation. But the two forces — performance management and AI-driven efficiency — are unlikely to remain separate for long.
What This Means for Goldman Sachs Employees
For the bank’s employees, the new model creates a different kind of psychological environment. Under the old SRA framework, staff largely knew when cuts would happen, even if they didn’t know who would be affected. The annual review brought a predictable, if stressful, rhythm. The rolling layoff model removes that predictability entirely.
The upside, arguably, is that poor performers may be addressed more quickly, rather than being left in limbo for months awaiting a formal review. For high performers, the change may be relatively inconsequential. But for those in gray areas — employees who aren’t standouts but aren’t clearly underperforming either — the new model could introduce persistent uncertainty.
Despite an outstanding 2025 for banks, the horizon has grown more complicated. Geopolitical volatility, a rising tide of AI adoption, and shifts in private credit markets have combined to create a more uncertain operating environment heading into the rest of 2026. Those broader pressures may well influence how aggressively Goldman Sachs uses its new rolling cut framework as the year progresses.
The Big Picture
Goldman Sachs’ move toward rolling, performance-based layoffs reflects something larger than one bank’s internal HR policy. It signals a maturation in how large financial institutions think about workforce strategy — moving away from blunt, periodic culls toward a more continuous, data-informed approach to talent management.
Whether this becomes a permanent feature of Goldman’s culture, or a one-off experiment that eventually reverts to the traditional SRA, remains to be seen. What’s clear is that the April cuts are just the beginning. With divisional leaders now empowered to act on their own timelines, and the possibility of a traditional SRA still on the table later in the year, Goldman Sachs employees may find 2026 to be a year of unusually sustained uncertainty — no matter how strong the firm’s financial results look on paper.
The bank has never been shy about prioritizing performance above all else. This year, it’s simply decided to do so more often, and on its own terms.
The exact number of employees to be affected by the April cuts has not been disclosed by Goldman Sachs.