Image: APA/AFP/ANGELA WEISS
A large wave of layoffs is sweeping the tech industry, not sparing the mighty giants. The job cuts are also a consequence of the corona pandemic in most of the companies affected. Due to the high demand in recent years, the workforce has been increased in many places. Two prime examples of the explosive growth typical of the industry are Amazon and the Facebook group Meta. Both companies have doubled the number of their employees in recent years.
It’s not the first time the industry has been hit by job cuts, but the scale is greater than ever. The industry service Layoffs.fyi calculates that more than 200,000 jobs have been lost since the beginning of 2022. High inflation and the fear of a recession are often cited as reasons why many corporations now want and need to tighten their belts.
The OÖN give an overview of the current developments at the tech giants.
Amazon: The online retailer was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic. As a result, the number of full-time and part-time employees doubled from 800,000 at the end of 2019 to more than 1.6 million at the end of 2021. The big boom in e-commerce is over, and in times of high inflation, money is no longer so easy for customers . 18,000 jobs are now being cut – it is the largest job cuts in the company’s history.
Meta: During the pandemic, advertising on Facebook was the means of choice, especially for many smaller companies, to boost business. The group grew from 45,000 employees at the end of 2019 to more than 87,000 three years later. The new reluctance of advertisers, increasing competition from TikTok and high development costs for the Metaverse led to the cancellation of 11,000 jobs in November.
Alphabet: The Google parent company also lives from online advertising and is now feeling the negative developments. The workforce grew from 119,000 employees at the end of 2019 to almost 187,000 in September 2022. A week ago it was announced that 12,000 jobs are now to be cut worldwide. According to experts, areas outside of the core business should be more affected.
Microsoft: As it turned out during the Corona period, Microsoft has backed the right horse with the expansion of its cloud business in recent years. At the end of the last financial year in mid-2022, the group had around 221,000 employees, after 144,000 three years earlier. The slump in PC sales in the aftermath of the pandemic caused the Windows business to shrink by 39 percent. Microsoft wants to cut 10,000 jobs by the end of March, but will hire more people in future areas.
Twitter: Neo-boss Elon Musk lived up to his reputation as a lateral thinker and kicked out half of the approximately 7,000 employees. According to media reports, only around 1,300 employees are now left. Musk has to save: He burdened Twitter with billions in debt for the takeover, which now has to be serviced – and advertising revenue is said to have collapsed by 40 percent.
Spotify: The music streaming market leader announced that around 600 jobs would be cut. This corresponds to around 6 percent of the workforce. The Swedish company announced in October that it would hold back on new hires.
Salesforce: The software specialist from San Francisco is currently in the process of cutting every tenth job due to the dreary economic environment. With more than 79,000 employees in December, around 8,000 jobs are on the cross-off list at the SAP rival.
Apple: The iPhone group is one of the few tech giants that hasn’t announced any dismantling yet. The reason for this is probably that Apple also increased during the pandemic, but the increase in employees was comparatively small at around 20 percent.
Source: Nachrichten
