American tech firms have announced thousands of layoffs this year so far, with reasons for these terminations ranging from over-hiring during the pandemic, worries about a potential recession, and efforts to cut costs.
Salesforce set the tone for the tech industry’s layoffs this year in January when it announced that 8,000 employees would be terminated. PayPal announced 2,000 layoffs, Microsoft 10,000, IBM 3,900, Amazon 18,000 jobs, and Alphabet 12,000 employees. Other major companies like Meta, Yahoo, Dell, and GoDaddy, among others, followed with more job cut announcements. More recently, Soundcloud has announced it is laying off eight percent of its global staff.
A report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. found the tech sector to have made the most job cut announcements so far this year. Between January and April, the tech industry announced 113,944 layoffs, which is 34 percent of all job cuts announced in 2023, it said….