As of: January 24, 2024, 2:31 p.m
By: Caspar Ibel
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eBay announces massive job cuts.
Around 1,000 employees are said to be affected.
This is the second job cut in a year.
Berlin - eBay's CEO, Jamie Iannone, has addressed his workforce with a message.
Wrapped between optimistic corporate phrases, he announced the reduction of 1,000 jobs, which corresponds to around 9% of the entire workforce.
In addition, the group is aiming to reduce employment contracts outside of the core workforce.
CEO Jamie Iannone blames the move on overspending: “While we are making progress in executing our strategy, our headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.”
As part of the restructuring, teams will be merged in order to be able to respond even better to customer needs.
Supervisors should promptly inform the affected employees about the layoffs via video call.
The company speaks of a difficult decision to say goodbye to many employees who have made important contributions to the company.
Second job cuts within a year highlight problems
eBay announced major job cuts as early as February 2023.
500 employees were affected, which made up 4 percent of the workforce at the time.
At the time, the measure came amid a major wave of layoffs in the US tech industry.
The renewed job cuts are certainly also due to eBay's individual challenges.
The pending figures for 2023 are likely to show slight sales growth.
However, the company has not managed to significantly increase sales since 2016.
In the last 6 years, sales have always fluctuated between 9 and 10 billion dollars per year.
Other online retailers such as Amazon (2022 sales: 514 billion USD) or Alibaba (2022 sales: 134 billion USD) were able to increase their sales significantly during this period.
eBay Logo.jpg © IMAGO/Schoening
eBay suffers from high inflation and strong competition
According to the Business of Apps analytics platform, the number of active sellers on eBay has also been declining in recent years.
While there were more than 21 million active sellers in 2019, the number fell to 18.3 million in 2023.
High inflation and ever-increasing competition from Amazon and Chinese marketplaces like Temu and Shein have definitely made the market environment more difficult for eBay.
As a result of the decision, eBay shares rose slightly.