The massive layoffs by tech companies this year alone have surpassed the levels from the Great Recession the world went through 2008-2009 that began with the Lehman Brothers collapse.
In 2008, during the Great Recession days, tech companies laid off about 65,000 employees, and a similar number of workers lost their livelihoods in 2009, according to data by Gray & Christmas. However, this year in 2022, by comparison 965 tech companies have laid off more than 150,000 employees surpassing the Great Recession levels of 2008-2009.
The tech layoffs were led by companies like Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft, Salesforce and others, and it is said to worsen early next year amid ongoing global macroeconomic conditions. According to a MarketWatch report, layoffs are part of a strategy by tech firms to maintain viability through 2023 and beyond.
As per data from layoffs.fyi, 1,495 tech companies have sacked 246,267 employees since the onset of Covid-19, but 2022 has been the worst year for the tech sector and early 2023 can even be grimmer. As of mid-November, more than 73,000 workers in the US tech sector have been laid off in mass-level job cuts led by companies like Meta, Twitter, Salesforce, Netflix, Cisco, Roku, and others.
In India too, over 17,000 tech employees have been shown the door.
Big Tech companies like Amazon and PC and printer major HP Inc are set to lay off more than 20,000 and up to 6,000 employees in days to come, respectively. Networking giant Cisco has started slashing nearly 4,000 jobs globally.
Google is reportedly bracing for massive layoffs early next year, with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly offering no assurance to worried Google employees that it won't happen.
He told employees that what the company is trying hard to do "is to make important decisions, be disciplined, prioritise where we can, rationalise where we can, so that we are set up to better weather the storm, regardless of what's ahead".
"I think that's what we should focus on and try and do our best there," Pichai added.
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