Global tech and finance heavyweights are quietly redrawing their maps of where white-collar work gets done. As layoffs ripple through American offices and President Donald Trump tightens immigration rules, more of the jobs that once clustered around Silicon Valley and Wall Street are being reassigned to India instead of to workers on U.S. soil.
Google, Microsoft and major Wall Street firms are at the center of this shift, using India as a pressure valve for cost, talent and policy risk. The result is a new phase of offshoring in which high-end engineering, trading support and analytics roles follow the work, even as the politics of outsourcing grow more heated in Washington.
Trump’s rules collide with corporate cost-cutting
The latest wave of job moves to India is not happening in a vacuum. I see it as the intersection of two powerful forces: aggressive cost-cutting after a bruising tech and finance downturn, and a political environment in which Trump’s immigration curbs make it harder and more expensive to bring foreign talent into the United States. A recent survey of executives found that Google, Microsoft and players are explicitly planning to shift more roles to India as layoffs and those rules bite, turning offshoring from a marginal tactic into a core strategy.
On the finance side, the logic is even starker. As Donald Trump’s new H‑1B visa curbs raise the cost of hiring skilled foreign workers in America, banks that once concentrated technology and operations jobs in New York are accelerating hiring in Bengaluru instead. Reporting on Wall Street notes that firms such as Goldman Sachs now see India not just as a back office but as a primary hub for the kind of quantitative and engineering talent they once imported to the United States.
From Silicon Valley to Bengaluru: tech’s new hiring map
For big tech, the pattern is similar, but the scale is even more visible. Major American tech giants including Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google are expanding their workforces in India as new H‑1B rules take effect this year, according to a report shared by the moneymatterscommunity account. The message from boardrooms is clear: if it is harder to bring Indian engineers to California, the companies will simply bring more of the work to India instead.
Influencers who track this shift argue that Trump’s crackdown is backfiring. Based on reports that U.S. tech majors including Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google added 32,000 employees in India, critics say the tougher regime, including a reported 100,000 dollar fee, is simply pushing jobs offshore instead of protecting American workers. That argument is gaining traction in policy circles, because it reframes offshoring not as a purely corporate choice but as a direct consequence of Washington’s own rules.
Google and Microsoft redraw their India strategies
Inside individual companies, the rebalancing is already visible in headcount decisions. Google has been one of the most prominent examples, cutting hundreds of staff in its internal “Core” organization while moving some of those roles to lower cost locations. The company laid off at least 200 employees from that group and shifted positions to India and Mexico, a concrete example of how restructuring in the United States is paired with hiring in cheaper markets. When executives talk about “global optimization,” this is what it looks like in practice.
Microsoft is taking a different tack but with a similar destination. Even as it trims staff in other regions, the company has confirmed that its India operations will be spared, with local leaders telling employees there will be layoffs in India despite job cuts across the world. In a separate confirmation, the company reiterated that Microsoft Confirms No in India Despite Global Job Reductions, with president Puneet Chandok saying “More jobs are being created for India,” a rare public acknowledgment that the country is gaining even as other markets shrink.
The strategic intent behind these moves is backed up by broader data. A separate survey of executives found that Google, Microsoft, Wall Immigration Curbs Bite, highlighting how policy and profit motives are aligning. When I look at the pattern across these reports, it is hard to escape the conclusion that India is no longer just a support center for these firms, it is becoming one of their primary employment markets.
Wall Street’s Global Capability Centers take center stage
Finance has been offshoring for longer than tech, but the current moment is accelerating a structural shift. U.S. companies are increasingly hiring in Indian hubs known as Global Capability Centers, or GCCs, to handle everything from risk modeling to software development. Reporting on Wall Street notes that this reliance on Indian GCCs is set to accelerate as Trump’s H‑1B visa crackdown drives more roles out of the United States and into these offshore centers.
The trend fits into a broader “quiet offshoring boom” in which U.S. companies shift professional jobs, not just call center work, to India. Analysis of Quiet Offshoring Boom notes that companies shift professional jobs to India and that firms like Goldman Sachs now run end‑to‑end product development from their Indian offices. For the American workforce, that means competition is no longer just the engineer down the street, it is the equally qualified analyst in Bengaluru who can do the same job at a fraction of the cost.
India’s talent boom and the political backlash in Washington
India’s ability to absorb this work is not accidental. Offshoring to India typically means U.S. companies move business processes like software development, finance or customer support to local teams, often using an Employer of Record model to simplify hiring. That structure lets firms ramp up quickly without building full legal entities, which is one reason the shift can happen so fast once a board signs off.
The Indian job market is also evolving to match what global employers want. A recent overview of the Top Technologies Ruling the Job Market in India describes how The Indian tech scene in 2026 is dominated by skills like artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cybersecurity, exactly the areas where Google and Microsoft are investing. That alignment between domestic skills and global demand makes it easier for companies to justify moving higher value work, not just routine tasks, to Indian cities.
In Washington, however, the optics are fraught. Trump has already fired a warning shot at American tech companies, publicly criticizing American giants such as Microsoft and Google for outsourcing jobs. At the same time, the company that built the world’s most used search engine, Google, is under pressure from investors to keep margins high, which offshoring helps achieve. That tension between political rhetoric and shareholder expectations is unlikely to ease, especially as more data emerges on how many roles are being relocated.
More from Morning Overview