The recent layoffs are a reaction to the brisk hiring that has taken place. … [+]
If you were casually reading the news, you would think that technology is cutting jobs radically and indiscriminately. According to Layoffs.fyi, 200 tech companies will lay off nearly 60,000 of her employees in 2023. The recent downsizing is a response to years of vigorous hiring, which has been greatly enhanced during the pandemic.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced 12,000 layoffs on Friday. While the numbers look staggering, they’re still less than the 12,765 total net jobs the search giant made in the third quarter of 2022. According to CNBC, Alphabet has been continuously hiring employees since 2013. is growing by at least 10% each year. The company increased its headcount by more than 20% in 2018 and 2019. Growth continues, with more than 16,000 new employees in 2020 and 21,000 new employees in 2021.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a memo to staff in November that the company would lay off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce. Since his IPO in May 2012, Meta (then Facebook) has added thousands of employees each year. In 2020, the social media platform increased its headcount by 30% to 13,000 employees. The following year, Meta added another 13,000 employees to its roster. His two years marked the biggest growth in the company’s history.
Amazon has launched a plan to cut over 18,000 white-collar professionals from their payroll. The online retail giant has employed hundreds of thousands of people during the pandemic, making him the second largest employer in the US after Walmart. According to GeekWire, Amazon will have an estimated 500,000 employees in 2020. A year later, the company increased its workforce by 310,000. Before the recent layoffs, Amazon reportedly employed 1.5 million workers for her, including corporate and warehouse staff.
Apple has expanded its workforce at a slower pace than other big tech companies and has maintained roughly the same hiring rate since 2016. Unlike some of its peers, which have aggressively hired during the pandemic, Apple has added his fewer than 7,000 jobs in 2020. In September 2022, the company reported that he employs 164,000 people in both the corporate and retail sectors. In August, Apple announced it was laying off 100 of his contract workers. However, the tech company has not announced any plans to cut staff.
What happened?
In 2020, the widespread pandemic lockdowns turned people to the internet and software applications. Students and workers have been forced to adopt remote work styles. The move to go online has been a hands-on exercise for tech giants, especially as small businesses shut down and people don’t want to leave their homes. As profits soared, companies expanded their workforces to meet demand.
The scramble for talent during the big resignations has led companies to hire and retain workers even if they don’t meet all the job requirements they want. Managers realized that if they didn’t recruit and onboard employees quickly, they would lose out to their competitors. Brimming with cheap and accessible capital and facing constant wars over talent, companies hoarded workers whenever they got the chance.
Now that the Federal Reserve has stopped spiking money from printing money, the greedy rates companies employed are no longer sustainable. That’s what’s happening in the tech industry right now.
People are finding new jobs despite layoffs being rampant
While many technical workers may appear to be out of work, the positive thing is that they are still finding new jobs relatively quickly in a tight job market. wall street journal A recent ZipRecruiter study reported that most laid-off tech workers find new jobs quickly after initiating their search. Nearly 80% of downsized tech workers found him a new role within three months of starting his job search, according to the study. About 40% of previously laid-off tech workers found a job less than a month after he started searching, according to data from ZipRecruiter.