Big picture: We’re less than a week into the new year and the tech sector is already feeling the pressure. So far this month he has laid off 29,686 of his tech employees at 27 companies worldwide, according to Layoffs Tracker. For comparison, in December 2022 he lost 17,074 tech workers jobs. In other words, the first few days of 2023 saw nearly 74% more layoffs than last month as a whole.
Amazon, which is responsible for more than half of the cuts, confirmed earlier this week it was parting ways with 18,000 employees after rapidly hiring over the past few years to meet needs during the pandemic. , stated that multiple teams would be affected, but the majority of role removals will be in Amazon stores and PXT organizations.
Meanwhile, San Francisco-based cloud software company Salesforce is cutting 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce.
Several cryptocurrency companies have also announced plans to lay off employees. Genesis says goodbye to 30% of its employees and Silvergate says goodbye to 40% of its employees. Crypto payment company Wire has completely gone out of business. E-commerce sites Everlane and Stitch Fix recently cut their workforce by 17% and 20% respectively.
According to Layoffs Tracker data, job cuts have spiked since May 2022 and haven’t slowed down much since. November was a particularly tough month for him, with more than 71,000 technicians laid off worldwide. Meta, Amazon, HP, Twitter, and Cisco led the way with significant scale backs.
Amazon’s analysis of the situation could also apply to many other big tech companies that have overhired to meet unprecedented demand for their services and products during the pandemic. Now that we have returned to a more or less normal way of life and the surge in online activity has subsided, some businesses no longer need the extra help and have been forced to cut staff.
Image credit: Tim Gouw