After the successful completion of acquisition of Twitter on October 28th, Elon Musk plans to lay off 50 percent of its 7,500 employees, according to sources familiar with the matter. This would be considered as the fourth-biggest single layoff in the world of technology since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the data crowd sourced by Layoffs.fyi. Although it is presumed to be one of the biggest, but it is not the only case of reducing the taskforce in the tech world in the last couple of weeks. This works as an indicator, that the layoff wave in the technology sector which started in April this year, diminished in November, and is now growing again is not yet over.
As the infographic indicates, 416 tech companies and startups existing in the United States laid off their employees between April and October, while in the first quarter there were only 20 companies which laid off their employees. For example, online used car retailer Carvana reduced its workforce by 2,500 employees in May. Much more prominent companies like PayPal and Netflix had comparably a smaller amount of staff lay off in this time period. The latter dismissed 450 or around four percent of its employees during the second quarter of 2022, while former terminated contracts for 83 of its workers.
More noteworthy cases of companies who reduced their
workforce in October were plant-based food start-up Beyond Meat, meal kit
provider Hello Fresh, and exercise equipment manufacturer Peloton. The latter
was founded in 2012 but became prominent during the early stages of the
pandemic. Stay-at-home obligation and social distancing measures led to a rise
in demand for the company's bikes and treadmills, which fell as quickly as it
rose only a year later. To stabilize its financial situation, Peloton let go of
more than 4,000 employees in three waves in February, August and October of
2022.
Social media giants like Twitter and TikTok laid off several
employees in the month of July. Due to the increasing pressure on Twitter by
the takeover by Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk was one of the suspected reasons for
these layoffs. One of Musk's most ruthless rivals, the Amazon-backed electric
vehicle manufacturer Rivian, also cut 840 of its employees in July due to the
world having "dramatically changed".
Infographic by: statista
