Tech sector layoffs for 2023 surpass whole of last year

Bucking the trend: Apple boss Tim Cook

Tech sector layoffs for 2023 have already surpassed the whole of last year amid a bloodbath in Silicon Valley.

Almost 169,000 people have been sacked since January, compared to the 164,411 who were let go in the entirety of 2022, according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi.

It comes as a flurry of the world’s biggest companies have slashed their headcounts in recent months in a bid to drive down costs in an era of high-interest rates and uncertainty.

Last month, Facebook owner Meta said it would be sacking 10,000 more staff – just months after the social network group axed a record 11,000.

Google’s parent company Alphabet, plus Amazon, Salesforce, Spotify and Microsoft, have all made significant layoffs.

The tech world has struggled with growth over the past 12 months, in part due to rising competition from the likes of TikTok and the withdrawal of budget from stretched advertisers.

As a result, more experimental projects have also faced the axe as the companies realise the challenges of innovating in a much softer economic backdrop.

And there is also the common thread of overhiring during the pandemic, which the likes of Amazon cited as the key reason behind its record cull of 27,000 jobs.

Ben Barringer, equity analyst at research firm Quilter Cheviot, said there was ‘a lot of unwinding to do’ as people spend less time looking at their screens than they did at the height of the pandemic.

And he suggested there could be more to come beyond the number already announced.

Layoffs.fyi data suggests that when tech firms are making cuts, they are doing so with greater force than before.

Around 566 firms have cut staff in the past four months, compared to 1,054 in the whole of 2022. This means that on average each firm is laying off 300 people in 2023, compared to an average of 155 last year.

IPhone maker Apple remains a major outlier that is yet to announce any major job cuts.