Mass Layoffs of 2022 and 2023

The international community has been through a lot these past few years. 2020 was the year of panic and uncertainty. It was the year that the global pandemic started in turn sparking restrictions on travel, business, supply chains and almost all aspects of our daily routines.

To help people deal with the newly found burdens, governments across the world made massive increases in their spending with a goal of reviving the economy, subsidizing businesses, and households.

The interest rates were intentionally kept low to keep the wounded economy limping forward. But as any economists who is worth their weight would agree nothing is created from thin air. Any action with only the best intentions behind it has consequences.

Increased government spending together with low interest rates drove up inflation to levels long not seen in the western world. Many businesses were quick to take advantage of an economy that seemed to be rebounding by increasing staff.

Now that the Fed together with the ECB and in turn the commercial banks have increased interest rates to combat inflation, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing a global energy crisis, the world is on a brink of global recession.

The same companies that were staffing between late 2021 and early 2022 are now forced to downsize.

Here is a list of companies that had mass layoffs recently:

• Alphabet: cutting 12,000 jobs – Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, said in an email sent to the company’s staff that the layoffs in the U.S. will take place immediately while in other countries the process may take longer due to local labor laws and practices.
• Microsoft: layoff 10,000 employees as the company is preparing for slower growth ahead.
• Amazon: cutting 18,000 jobs – primarily in HR and stores divisions.
• Coinbase: cutting 2,000 jobs.
• Salesforce: 7,000 jobs cut or 10% of their staff.
• Meta: 11,000 in workforce reduction.
• Twitter: 3,700 jobs cut.

The list goes on, but it seems that not only tech is affected by the current economic slowdown, the mass layoffs are transcending many industries.