Ever since the pandemic, the trends in the employment sectors have seen drastic changes. The pandemic led to the rise of many new small firms on one hand whereas, on the other hand, it led to companies laying off significant amounts of their employees. The last few years have seen constant layoffs by small to big firms across various industries. And the reason isn’t just post-pandemic market adjustments. It is also because of factors like cost-cutting and companies’ inclination towards AI etc.
Layoffs.fyi, an independent layoffs tracker states that about 422 tech companies have laid off 136,782 employees as of 30 August 2024. This article will give you a brief walkthrough of some of the companies that laid off employees in the year 2024.
Apple:
It wasn’t long before Apple laid off about 614 employees in California in May 2024. Now after two months, Apple has laid off about 100 employees in their digital services group. This action will draw a shift in the company’s digital content strategy. The Books and News team of the company is the one who would have a direct impact because of this layoff.
GoPro:
Popular action camera and accessories brand GoPro, is aiming to cut off about 15 percent of its workforce by 2024 end. The company is looking forward to cutting costs and focusing on its principal business amidst the present market conditions. About 139 employees will be affected because of this workforce cut-off by the company.
Sonos:
Sonos, the popular audio technology company will see another round of layoffs, which would amount to cutting about 6 percent of their workforce. About 100 employees will thus be laid off. Earlier in 2023, Sonos laid off about 7 percent of their workforce, to adapt to market dynamics.
Cisco:
Cisco is to see another round of layoffs in 2024, just after a layoff round of about 4000 employees in February 2024. The networking giant is making this move to reform their structure so that it aligns better with present market conditions and levitates growth.
Dell:
Dell aims to create a new sales unit specifically dedicated to AI products. As a result, they are looking forward to making cuts this month. The brand is looking forward to striking a chord in the market’s demand for AI solutions. However, it is not known how much of the workforce would Dell layoff.
Intel:
At the start of August 2024, Intel announced a layoff of about 15,000 employees, one of the highest number of layoffs to happen recently. This amounts to about 15 percent of their workshop. The company took this decision as a result of slower-than-expected revenue growth. On the other hand, Intel is another company looking forward to reforming itself in a way to fit into future technological trends like AI.
Microsoft:
Microsoft has done multiple rounds of layoffs this year. To start with, they laid off about 2,000 employees in January from their gaming unit, right after the company acquired Activision Blizzard. Following it were layoffs in the company’s cloud business Azure, the HoloLens mixed reality segment, and product and program management roles, in the months of June and July. The impact of this was witnessed by the entire world, as it greatly affected the working structure of the company. However, the company never disclosed the exact number of employees laid off in these rounds.
Google:
Alphabet, Google’s parent company is another one who joined the layoff trend this year and laid off about 630 employees from various departments. This includes their Voice Assistant, hardware teams (Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit), advertising sales, and AR teams. The company laid off about 200 employees in the April round from their core teams, which even included senior-level executives. The layoff aims at simpler execution and velocity drive according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
