IBL News | New York
Since the start of this year, more than 50,000 workers have been laid off from over 200 tech companies, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi. In addition, tech salaries have largely stagnated in the last two years.
Tech is a notable outlier in a labor market that’s been largely steady over the past two years. The U.S. economy added 275,000 jobs in February, topping 200,000 for a third straight month.
These cuts follow the trend that arose in 2023 when over 260,000 workers across nearly 1,200 tech companies lost their jobs.
In fact, 2023 was the second-biggest year of cuts in the technology sector, behind only the dot-com crash in 2001.
Moreover, February’s job cut count was the highest of any February since 2009, when the financial crisis forced companies into cash preservation mode.
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have all taken part in the downsizing this year, along with eBay, Unity Software, SAP, and Cisco.
PayPal announced that it was eliminating 9% of its workforce, or about 2,500 jobs.
The markets have cheered on the cost-cutting, estimating that spending discipline and efficiency gains from AI will lead to rising profits. As a result, tech stocks reached record highs.
Software developers and data scientists whose skills were highly valued two years ago now face an increasingly competitive market with lower pay than their prior jobs. Many are now considering whether they need to exit the industry to find employment.
Others, like people who worked at Google, are organizing themselves to find new opportunities.
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Startups are shutting down at a higher rate to start 2024.
Among Carta startups that have raised at least $5 mill – 61 shut down in Jan+Feb. That’s higher than all of Q4 2023, which was the prior record.
True for Series A, Seed, Series B…all over
Hug your founder friends. pic.twitter.com/dAvaKAPvpK
— Peter Walker (@PeterJ_Walker) March 19, 2024
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