Chart: All the Major Tech Layoffs in 2024 So Far

TECHNOLOGY

Chart: All the Major Tech Layoffs in 2024 So Far‍

Charted: All the Major Tech Layoffs in 2024 So Far

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Layoffs tend to pick up in January as companies look to restructure, reorganize, and re-prioritize based on their forecast for the new year.

For the tech industry that has seen quite a bit of upheaval in the last two years, 2024 seems to be a continuation of a mix of earlier factors at play.

We visualize some of the bigger layoffs in the year so far, from video game software provider Unity to big tech bastion Google. Data is sourced from Layoffs.fyi, an aggregator that has been collecting tech layoff news since 2020.

Only those companies with a specified number of employees let go have been included in our list.

List of Companies That Have Cut Jobs in 2024

While the big tech companies tend to take up the headlines, there’s quite a bit of churn in the broader space at the moment.

For example, Milwaukee-based short-term rental company FrontDesk did not herald the new year with any joy: the entire 200-strong staff was laid off on the second day of 2024. The current macroeconomic environment is not friendly to companies with large upfront capital costs, as seen with the WeWork saga last year.

Here’s the full list of tech and tech-adjacent companies that have announced job cuts since the beginning of the month.

Search:

2024 Company Jobs Cut % of Company Employees Industry

Jan 02 The Messenger 24 N/A Media

Jan 02 FrontDesk 200 100% Travel

Jan 03 Orca Security 60 15% Security

Jan 03 Lazada Group 100 30% Retail

Jan 04 Trigo 30 15% Retail

Jan 05 Cue Health 94 N/A Healthcare

Jan 06 NanoString Tech 50 9% Healthcare

Jan 08 BenchSci 70 17% Healthcare

Jan 08 Pitch 80 67% Other

Jan 08 Flexe 99 38% Logistics

Note: The N/A label denotes missing information from the source on the percentage of the workforce cut. Data current up to January 23th, 2024.

Layoff season really began to gather steam by the start of the second week of January when video game software developer Unity cut a staggering one-fourth of their workforce, amounting to 1,800 employees.

A day later, streaming platform Twitch (owned by Amazon) fired 500 employees, or about 35% of their workforce.

Between January 10–11th, a flurry of similar announcements:

• Voice, video, and text app Discord cut 170 jobs, 17% of their employee pool.
• Amazon-owned Audible let go of 100 employees. In fact, the e-commerce giant announced that “several hundreds” of employees in Prime Video and its studios division were also let go.
• Two other layoff announcements from the Big Tech space: Google let go of 1,000 employees across several divisions (hardware, advertising, search, maps) and Meta-owned Instagram cut 60 jobs.

On the 16th, YouTube (also owned by Google) laid off 100 people, saying they had six months to apply to different roles within the company.

Will 2024 See As Many Tech Layoffs as 2023?

Last year was brutal for the tech sector with 1,186 companies laying off about 262,242 employees in 2023. January saw the brunt of it, with nearly 90,000 reported job cuts across companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Year

January Layoffs

Total Layoffs

2022 510 164,969

2023 89,809 262,242

2024 (YTD) 10,963 10,963

Note: Data current up to January 23th, 2024.

So far in 2024, in an extension of events from the last year, there are two factors at play, both rooted in the pandemic. The video game industry (and the larger tech industry) say they over-hired in 2020 and 2021 to ride the increase in digital activity after social-distancing rules went into effect around the world.

In the post-pandemic world however, companies now say they simply expanded too quickly. Discord’s CEO Jason Citron said the company grew its workforce 5x since 2020 and now needed to scale back to “sharpen focus” and “bring agility” to the organization.

Meanwhile, for the larger tech companies (Google, Amazon, and Meta) the rapid rise of AI is causing a shift in internal priorities. While still rectifying the pandemic over-hiring, the companies are also trimming down other projects as they attempt to catch up with rival Microsoft whose OpenAI still remains a market leader in the space.

“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year. The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.” — SUNDAR PICHAI, GOOGLE CEO.

Despite the tech layoffs so far in 2024, analysts are saying that this will not be a repeat of last year, even as more job cuts are expected in the coming months. In fact, AI-related roles might flourish, but at a smaller scale as tech companies chase efficiency for the new year.

Source: visualcapitalist