2024 has started with another wave of tech industry layoffs. This time, though, the cuts are way smaller.
In early 2023, a decade of abundance came to a painful end for many tech workers. More than 200,000 jobs were eliminated in a few months as Amazon, Google, Meta, and other tech giants slashed costs aggressively.
In January 2023 alone, more than 108,000 tech jobs disappeared. This January looks like a cake walk in comparison, with fewer than 45,000 positions eliminated, according to TrueUp’s layoff tracker.
Software job postings are also relatively healthy, suggesting that tech companies are still hiring even as they shed other workers.
January 2024 saw software job postings rise slightly from a strong December 2023. This performance was better than last year, when January 2023 job postings declined compared to a weaker December 2022, according to data compiled by Matt Hedberg, a software analyst at RBC Capital Markets.
Small, continual job cuts
So why does it still feel so grim across the tech industry?
This year, there’s small, continual job cutting by many tech companies, rather than a single huge round of layoffs. In 2023, the Band-Aid was pulled off all at once. So far in 2024, it’s being peeled off excruciatingly slowly.
Google is a good example. In January 2023, it announced 12,000 layoffs. This year, it’s been a few hundred cut in consumer hardware, along with several hundred in advertising sales, and so on.
In January 2023, Amazon executed the largest job cuts in its history when it laid off 18,000 workers. Lately, the cuts have been smaller and more focused. A few hundred at the company’s One Medical and Pharmacy units this week, for example, along with “quiet firing” tactics, according to some employees. Last week, Amazon’s CFO declined to say layoffs are over.
In late 2022, Meta said it was cutting 10,000 workers. This year, the company is taking more targeted efficiency steps such as eliminating management layers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently that this “leaner” approach will be “a permanent part of how we operate going forward.”
Startup carnage
Then there’s a wave of startup closures happening right now. This tsunami of failures hadn’t got going back in early 2023. Now, these shutdowns are much more common. They don’t involve huge numbers of job losses, but they are traumatic nonetheless. For the founders fighting to hold on, and the investors seeing their money go up in smoke.
So, a constant flow of relatively bad news, along with executive comments suggesting it might not end. That’s not an environment where employees feel comfortable.
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