List Of Companies Laid Off And Reasons

Almost all of the world's top companies are on a layoff spree, especially the huge giants. A total of 10,000 employees have been laid off by some companies, even all at once. 

Cost-cutting, inflation and financial difficulties are some of the reasons behind the substantial layoffs that occurred during pressures and the global economic recession. 

In response to weak consumer spending, rising interest rates, and the soaring effects of inflation across the world's economic and financial markets, the major companies in the world have either frozen their laid-off employees. 

Here is a list of the top 8 companies laying off employees and the key reasons behind it.

1. Meta

Laid off: 11000 employees

The largest tech layoff was when Meta, the parent organization of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced on November 9, 2022, that it would be letting go of more than 11,000 employees, around 13% of its workforce.

Meta has suffered over the last year. In 2021, the company was valued at $1 trillion, but multiple factors have heavily affected Meta's value and stock price.  

“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to employees. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

2. Amazon

Laid off: 18000 Employees

Amazon announced laying off around 18000 employees globally ahead of the expected recession in 2023. A day later, Amazon India was informed to lay off around 1000 employees in the country in the coming months. 

The Amazon CEO said in a statement that they were not done with the annual planning process as earlier mentioned, and "I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023".

3. Twitter

Laid Off: 3700

Over 3700 employees were laid off after Elon Musk took over the social media platform, accounting for over 50% of the platform's global workforce, including senior executives and the former CEO, Parag Agarwal. 

As per a report by Bloomberg, Twitter fired its staff from the trust and safety team and its global content moderation unit that handled hate speech and harassment. Furthermore, employees in the teams handling global appeals and state media on the platform were also eliminated.

4. Microsoft

Laid off: 10,000 Jobs

Microsoft announced on January 18, 2023, to cut 10,000 jobs globally, 5% of the workforce. The layoffs, affecting less than 5% of Microsoft's workforce, would conclude by the end of March, with notifications beginning Wednesday.

The company's CEO Satya Nadella released in a statement to its employees “in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities''. 

5. Ford

Laid Off: 3580 employees

Ford announced a laid off in the month of April that 580 of its US employees. Later, on August 2022 the company started its second layoff, firing over 3,000 employees and contract workers. 

The corporation wants to adopt new technologies that were not previously important to its operations, which is reported to be the cause of the layoffs and resource redeployment.

6. IBM

Laid off: 3,900 Employees

IBM is laying off 3,900 employees due to the spinoff of IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl business and part of the AI unit called `Watson Health`In 2023.

7. Google

Laid off: 12,000 Employees 

Google has declared to lay off its workforce by cutting 12,000 roles joining other companies which laid off their employees in 2023. All the affected employees in the US have been sent an email regarding the layoff and in other countries, the process will take a few days due to local laws and practices.

8. Spotify

Laid off: 6% Employees

Spotify plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to around $50 million, adding to the huge layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.

The company said that there were 9,808 full-time employees working for Spotify. Today’s move will impact around 600 employees.

“Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us,” Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said in a note sent to its employees.

Summary 

The biggest tech companies and organisations are facing problems and many of them are laying off their employees in response to that. 

There are multiple reasons, varying and some of the common reasons for the layoff are companies are not able to adapt to the situations after the pandemic, inflation is on the rise again, and companies facing financial difficulties.

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