Google has laid off 12,000 employees, which is about 6% of its workforce. This marks the latest tech company to cut staff during the recent economic boom.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai informed employees Friday at Google in an email. The email was also posted on Google’s news site.
This is the largest round of layoffs the company has ever had. It also adds to the tens of thousands of other job losses announced recently by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, and other tech companies. They are tightening their belts in an industry that is facing a darkening outlook. Major companies in this sector have announced at least 48,000 job losses just this month.
Pichai stated that the last two years have seen dramatic growth. We hired people to help us face a different economic reality from the one we currently find.
He stated that the layoffs are a result of a Google “rigorous evaluation” of its operations.
Pichai stated that the jobs being eliminated were “cross-cutting Alphabet, product area, functions, levels, and regions.” Pichai said he was deeply sorry for the layoffs.
Google’s workforce increased during the pandemic. It grew to almost 187,000 people late last year, from 119,000 at the end of 2019 (Regulatory filings).
Pichai stated that Google was founded almost a quarter century ago and is “bound to experience difficult economic cycles.”
He wrote, “These are crucial moments to sharpen your focus, re-engineering our cost base and directing our talent and capital towards our highest priorities.”
According to Pichai’s letter, there will be job losses in the U.S.A. and other unspecified nations.
The tech industry was forced to stop hiring and reduce jobs “as hyper-growth and digital advertisement headwinds are on the horizon,” Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives and Taz Koujalgi wrote Friday.
Microsoft announced this week 10,000 job cuts or almost 5% of its workforce. Amazon announced this month that it would be cutting 18,000 jobs. However, that’s only a fraction of the 1.5 million-strong workforce. Salesforce, a business software company, will lay off approximately 8,000 employees, or 10%. Last fall, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced that it would be laying off 11,000 jobs or 13% of its employees. After acquiring Twitter last fall, Elon Musk reduced the number of jobs at Twitter.
These job cuts also affect smaller companies. Sophos, a U.K.-based cybersecurity company, laid off 450 employees, or 10% of its global workforce. In its second round, Coinbase, a cryptocurrency trading platform, laid off 20% of its workforce. This is approximately 950 jobs.
The Wedbush analysts stated that “the stage is being set: tech companies across the board are cutting cost to preserve margins” and getting leaner in this economic climate.
The U.S. economy has shown resilience despite slowing growth. In December, 223,000 additional jobs were added. The increase in demand for tech workers working remotely has led to a remarkable growth rate in the sector over the past few years.
Even though CEOs of many companies are being blamed for their rapid growth, these same companies remain larger than before the economic boom.
Hello,my name is mustafa Juma im from Tanzania, I’m looking for a job ,but I see this group when I want to apply a work it refuse