IT jobs are no longer the safe bet they once were. Since the start of the year, 209 tech companies have laid off 50,312 employees, according to.
The big picture: Job cuts in the tech industry last year were attributed to the need to economize, driven by inflation and a hiring spree during the pandemic. So, what’s the explanation this year, especially when many of these firms have accumulated a significant amount of cash?
IT jobs are no longer the safe bet they once were. Since the start of the year, 209 tech companies have laid off 50,312 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi. Last year, a total of 1,191 tech companies gave 269,180 employees their walking papers.
These aren’t just startups who are letting their workers go. Alphabet, Amazon, Cisco, eBay, Meta, Microsoft, SAP, and Unity Software have all downsized their staff in recent months and in sizable numbers. PayPal is yet another example: it announced in January that it planned to eliminate 2,500 jobs or nine percent of its workforce.
The carnage is so great that it is second only to the dot-com bust in 2001, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Its latest report offers some faint relief to the sector as cuts in the sector from the January-February 2024 period have fallen 55 percent from the 63,216 cuts through February 2023.
