The Job Market Bloodbath Continues

The world has witnessed troubled times since the pandemic came calling somewhere in the latter half of 2018. Ever since, job losses have become a regular headline with companies hiring and firing at will, based on the ebbs and flows of demand for their product or service. However, the macroeconomic headwinds of a recession has taken this phenomenon to the next level.

Readers may recall that there was a boom post the pandemic when the great resignation became part of corporate parlance as every company was offering substantive packages to lure people out of their desks. However, all of this came to nought in the second half of 2022 as jobs were cut, both as a means to correct over-hiring and to prepare for tech enhancements. 

As has been the practice earlier, the start-ups and mid-tier companies weren’t the only ones throwing out pink slips this time. The big tech companies ranging from Alphabet to Amazon and Microsoft to Meta, saw people being left in the lurch as the economic downturn took a serious turn in most of North America and Europe. 

The layoffs haven’t slowed down in January

And things haven’t got better in 2023 with the first month itself witnessing 256 tech companies laying off more than 82,000 employees, according to the tracking website Layoffs.fyi. The latest to join this bandwagon is the Match Group, which owns Pinterest and Tinder. The company has announced an 8% across-the-board reduction of its workforce. 

Pinterest laid off 150 people or less than 5% of its 4,000 workforce, though all of it hasn’t come from just one entity, according to Bloomberg. Of course, this number is small compared to the 3,900 that IBM is reportedly laying off as it forecast annual revenue growth to be in the mid-single digits and much lower than its estimates. Meanwhile, Paypal is also shaving off 7% of its over-2000 strong workforce. 

Others who’ve announced staff cuts include Spotify, which reported that it would let go of roughly 600 people, having removed 38 members from its Gimlet Media and Parcast podcast studios last October. 

The Big-Tech lost the biggest chunk

Between Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, the total number of layoffs amount to 51,000 jobs with Amazon accounting for the largest chunk of 18,000 job cuts. While Google let go of 12,000 people, Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs while Meta gave out pink slips to 11,000 of its staff. Twitter let go of 3,700 people as part of Elon Musk’s reorganization plans for the company. 

Some other names that we came across include Salesforce which is laying off 10% of its workforce, and SAP that plans to reduce about 3,000 positions over the year. Companies that have indicated a cost cutting plan include Intel, HP, Cisco and Vimeo among others. HP expects to remove 6,000 jobs by end-2025 while Cisco says 5% of its staff would be affected. 

Indian companies laid off too

Of course, it isn’t as though Indian companies have not been impacted by this meltdown. eCommerce company Dealshare laid off 100 staffers while GoMechanic let go of 70% of the team that is running the car-servicing start-up. ShareChat let go of over 500 employees while Swiggy reportedly sacked 380 members of its staff and Dunzo let go of about 3% employees. 

Ride-hailing service Ola let go of between 140 to 200 employees though these were spread out between its ride-hailing, EV and fintech business verticals. However, the worst affected were the edtech companies led by Byju’s that let go of 600 people from its group brands and is now readying a cost rationalization that could result in a 5% layoff from its 50,000 workforce. 

Others in this list include Vedantu that let go of 385 employees in a fourth round of layoffs over the past twelve months, having let go of 100 members from its sales team in July last and another 624 full time and contractual employees in two tranches during May. Unacademy, another edtech brand, reduced 350 jobs in its bid towards profitability, having earlier let go of 1000 members that included both contract and full-time staffers.