A new wave of massive layoffs is shaking the global technology industry.
In the last 24 hours, two companies announced cuts to their staff: this is the digital payments company
PayPal
, which announced the reduction of
9% of its staff
;
and the messaging and logistics company
UPS
, which
dismissed 12,000 people
this Monday.
Thus, they join 100 other large companies in the tech world, which in the first month of the year alone
laid off nearly 25,000 people.
Through a letter to the market, Alex Chriss, the president of PayPal, announced this Monday his intention to make an adjustment to its employee structure to eliminate 2,500 jobs. "We are doing this to adjust
the size of our business,
allowing us to move forward with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive
profitable growth
. At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business that we believe will generate and accelerate growth," he said.
Almost at the same time, the logistics and distribution company UPS reported that it will lay off 12,000 employees, after having closed a difficult 2023 for its income.
Although UPS is not a technology company
per se,
its case aligns with the situation of the rest of the
tech
companies that were affected by
an "oversizing"
of their staff during the pandemic, the impact of a
still high inflation
for the central countries and the advancement of the
use of artificial intelligence
for their businesses.
In the last month, nearly 100 companies announced cuts, amounting to approximately 25,000 jobs worldwide.
Almost all of those known as big tech appear within this list:
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta,
among others, decided to reduce their staff as one of the first measures in 2024.
In total, according to the site
layoffs.fyi,
which compiles information provided to the stock market and was replicated by large global financial media such as the Bloomberg news agency, the Wall Street Journal and The NewYork Times, there
are already more than 28 thousand jobs in the sector that have been lost since January 1.
The industry stopped going through the flourishing
"boom" it achieved during the pandemic
, with full employment, fights over hiring talent and
high salaries
for almost all of its positions.
This year's layoffs are in addition to another 250,000 cuts that occurred in 2023, which Wall Street points out as
the worst twelve months for Silicon Valley since the dot.com crash
in the 2000s.
The change in global financial conditions in the post-pandemic seriously affected the margins of these companies and their projections.
Everyone is now seeking to be more efficient with their expenses and resources.
NE