Tech layoffs in January exceed December total in just 5 days

The year has begun on a grim note for thousands of tech workers worldwide as global companies have already laid off more employees in the first five days of January than they did through the whole of December 2022.

According to data from tracking website Layoffs Tracker, tech companies globally have already announced layoffs impacting 28,096 workers till the 5th of the month. This is 64.5 percent more than the 17,074 layoffs announced in December.

Amazon, which this week announced layoffs impacting as many as 18,000 workers, accounts for more than half of the numbers so far. In a statement, the company’s CEO Andy Jassy said that the move was taken to prioritise “what matters most to customers and the long-term health” of Amazon.

Salesforce is another tech giant that has announced plans to lay off thousands of workers. In a regulatory filing, the company announced that it plans to cut 10 percent of its 80,000-strong workforce (around 10,000 workers will be laid off).

“I’ve been thinking a lot about how we came to this moment. As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people, leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” said Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, in a letter to employees.

Lakhs were laid off last year. Will 2023 be worse?

Data from Layoffs Tracker shows that 2,43,468 workers were laid off by 1,168 companies in CY 2022.

November 2022 saw the most layoffs, with a total of 71,416 people from 204 companies losing their jobs that month.

Meta, which announced plans to let go of 11,000 workers in November, topped the chart for laying off the most people in 2022. The social media giant was followed by HP, which announced that it was laying off 6,000 employees globally.

Among companies headquartered outside the United States, Getir, a Turkish app-based grocery and courier delivery service, took the pole position for the biggest layoff announced in 2022. The Istanbul-based startup let go of 14 percent of its workforce, or 4,480 employees.

Sounding a note of caution, Gaurav Munjal, CEO of Indian edtech firm Unacademy, tweeted in November, “2023 will be worse than 2022 for Tech. This is what I keep hearing.”

2023 will be worse than 2022 for Tech. This is what I keep hearing.

— Gaurav Munjal (@gauravmunjal) November 27, 2022

Going by the headcount bloodbath in the first week of the year, that tweet appears to be prescient.