Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) headcount decreased by nearly 20,000 between July and September of 2025.
The number raised many questions, given that TCS had proclaimed that it was only planning on laying off around 12,000 employees as part of its planned restructuring.
According to Q2 FY26 data on its website, the company’s headcount stood at 5,93,314 as of September 30, 2025. TCS had a workforce of 6,13,069 on June 30, 2025, indicating a decrease of 19,755 people during the quarter.
“The 20,000 headcount (reduction) is a factor of voluntary and involuntary attrition,” – TCS Chief of Human Resources (CHRO), Sudeep Kunnumal.
Kunnumal claimed that only about 6,000 employees left the company involuntarily, as they were “released” as part of the restucturing that the company had announced earlier in the year. With this, the CHRO stated that the company was only halfway through its planned layoffs.
During its investor presentation for Q2FY26, TCS shared that the voluntary attrition at the company had decreased by 50 points to 12.3% when compared sequentially (MoM) to 13.8% from the previous quarter.
The Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) claimed that the numbers shared by TCS highlight that the company has downplayed its layoff numbers, as per PTI.
“This is not a minor difference. Nearly 8,000 employees, more than what TCS admitted, have disappeared from the rolls. For a company of TCS’ scale, such underreporting cannot be dismissed as an error. It points to a deliberate attempt to downplay the scale of retrenchments and mislead regulators, policymakers, and the public,” said NITES.
NITES added that the drop in total TCS headcount is “deeply alarming,” especially since the company’s attrition rate has decreased in the second quarter.
“TCS has continued to grow revenue during the same period, proving that business performance cannot be used as a justification for such drastic cuts. TCS may present these job cuts as numbers on a balance sheet, but for us, they are stories of shattered lives,” NITES stated. The union claimed that employees who have given 10-15 years of loyalty to TCS are being cornered, threatened, and discarded overnight.
“This is not restructuring, this is corporate cruelty. TCS has chosen profits over people, turning its workplace into a fear factory and betraying the very workforce that built its empire,” – Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of NITES.
On the other hand, CHRO Kunnumal assured its investors that the layoffs were being handled sensitively.
“We are providing the impacted employees with benefits, counselling and outplacement support for their transition as well as severance at terms higher than industry standards,” said the CHRO.
