After a noticeable declining trend in tech layoffs during the second half of 2023, the trend appears to be reversing. The number of employees laid off in the tech sector increased by 304% in January 2024 as compared to December 2023.
Restructuring, cost-cutting, leaner organization, efficiency — many reasons have been quoted, as Wall Street has abounded with layoffs-related news.
According to Layoffs.fyi data, a total of 105 companies have laid off 28,963 employees so far in 2024. The number of tech sector employees laid off in December 2023 was 7,159. Hence, January recorded a month-over-month increase of over 300% in number of employees laid off in the tech sector.
The number of tech companies that laid off also increased from 57 in December 2023 to 105 in January 2024.
Some notable tech layoffs that created a buzz on Wall Street so far in 2024 included:
- Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL aka Google kickstarted 2024 with mysterious layoffs that claimed over 1,000 employees overnight. In 2023, Google laid off over 12,000 employees.
- PayPal Holdings, Inc PYPL initiated company-wide layoffs, impacting around 9% of its workforce, or approximately 2,500 employees.
- Block Inc. SQ, co-founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, has initiated a major layoff strategy, affecting over a thousand employees across various sectors of the company.
- Microsoft Corp MSFT recently announced layoffs for its recently acquired Activision Blizzard unit and its Xbox division.
- Salesforce Inc CRM implemented layoffs of close to 700 employees, about 1% of its 70,000-strong workforce.
What 3 companies have laid off the most employees so far in 2024:
- PayPal: 2,500 employees. Per CEO Alex Chriss‘ memo to all the employees, the move was to “right-size” the business.
- Microsoft: 1,900 employees. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the layoffs were intended to “minimize areas of overlap.”
- Unity Software Inc U: 1,800 employees. The move came shortly after interim CEO Jim Whitehurst announced a “company reset” saying “We are…reducing the number of things we are doing in order to focus on our core business.”
Here’s what Reddit/ors had to say about these layoffs:
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