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Charted: All the Major Tech Layoffs in 2024 So Far

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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.

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
Jan 08 NuScale Power 154 28% Energy
Jan 08 Flipkart 1,100 5% Retail
Jan 08 Unity 1,800 25% Other
Jan 09 Humane 10 4% Hardware
Jan 09 Rent the Runway 37 10% Retail
Jan 09 Uber Freight 40 N/A Logistics
Jan 09 Nevro 63 5% Healthcare
Jan 09 Branch 85 N/A Finance
Jan 09 Twitch 500 35% Consumer
Jan 10 Instagram 60 N/A Consumer
Jan 10 BeamBenefits 74 N/A Healthcare
Jan 10 IAC 330 N/A Consumer
Jan 10 Google 1,000 0.5% Consumer
Jan 11 Sisense 60 13% Data
Jan 11 Audible 100 5% Media
Jan 11 Inmobi 125 5% Marketing
Jan 11 Discord 170 17% Consumer
Jan 11 Playtika 300 10% Consumer
Jan 11 New Work SE 400 N/A Consumer
Jan 12 GrabCAD 13 N/A Other
Jan 12 Veeam 300 N/A Data
Jan 16 First Mode 48 20% Transport
Jan 16 SonderMind 49 17% Healthcare
Jan 16 Sirplus 60 N/A Food
Jan 16 YouTube 100 5% Media
Jan 18 Amazon 30 N/A Retail
Jan 19 Wayfair 1,650 13% Retail
Jan 21 SolarEdge 900 16% Energy
Jan 22 Riot Games 530 11% Consumer
Jan 22 TikTok 60 N/A Consumer
Jan 23 Brex 282 20% Finance
Jan 23 Vroom 800 80% Transport

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 262,682 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.

The post Charted: All the Major Tech Layoffs in 2024 So Far appeared first on Visual Capitalist.