After a brutal mass layoff in 2023, the trends continue in 2024. Thousands of tech companies including Google and Amazon have announced job cuts in the first two weeks of the year. According to the layoff-tracking website Layoffs.fyi, 48 companies has sacked 7,528 employees till January 15.
This signals that the year 2024 is going to be yet another tough year for the tech industry. Last year, more than 1,150 tech companies collectively fired over 260,000 people.
In a bid to cut costs, big tech companies including Google and Amazon plans to cut more jobs in the coming days. The reason provided behind this layoff by many companies include economic slowdown and restructuring.
India has played significant role in the global tech industry’s layoffs in 2024, accounting for a substantial 16% of the total.
On global scale, google, unity, and flipkart emerged as the top three tech companies with the highest number of employees layoffs this year. More than 1,000 employees lost their jobs.
Online rental platform Frontdesk became the first tech company to cut jobs in 2024 and it fired its entire 200-person workforce in a “two-minute Google call”,
Alphabet-owned Google has announced plans to lay off hundreds of employees working on its digital assistant, hardware and engineering teams. Several Amazon-owned companies and other units, including Twitch, Audible and Prime Video are going to witness job cuts in the coming weeks, reports times of India.
Streaming platform Twitch has announced to reduce its work force by 35%. While Audible is laying off about 5% of its workforce. Social chat startup Discord has also told employees on January 11 that it would cut 17% of its staff, which constitute about 170 employees.
IT company Xerox announced on January 3 that it will reduce its workforce by 15%, about 3,000 employees, in the first quarter of 2024. Video game software provider Unity software will also cut approximately 25% of its workforce or 1,800 jobs.