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Last year’s job cuts weren’t the end of layoffs. Further reductions have begun in 2024.
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Companies like Tesla, Google, Microsoft, Nike, and Amazon have announced plans for cuts this year.
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See the full list of corporations reducing their worker numbers in 2024.
A slew of companies across the tech, media, finance, and retail industries made significant cuts to staff in 2023. Tech titans like IBM, Google, Microsoft, finance giants like Goldman Sachs, and manufacturers like Dow all announced layoffs.
This year is looking grim too. And it’s only May.
Nearly 40% of business leaders surveyed by ResumeBuilder think layoffs are likely at their companies this year, and about half say their companies will implement a hiring freeze. ResumeBuilder talked to about 900 leaders at organizations with more than 10 employees. Half of those surveyed cited concerns about a recession as a reason.
Another major factor is artificial intelligence. Around four in 10 respondents said they’ll conduct layoffs as they replace workers with AI. Dropbox, Google, and IBM have already announced job cuts related to AI.
Here are the dozens of companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2024.
Nike’s up-to-$2 billion cost-cutting plan will involve severances.
Nike announced its cost-cutting plans in a December 2023 earnings call, discussing a slow growth in sales. The call subsequently resulted in Nike’s stock plunging.
“We are seeing indications of more cautious consumer behavior around the world,” Nike Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said in December.
Google laid off hundreds more workers in 2024.
On January 10, Google laid off hundreds of workers in its central engineering division and members of its hardware teams — including those working on its voice-activated assistant.
In an email to some affected employees, the company encouraged them to consider applying for open positions at Google if they want to remain employed. According to the email, April 9 will be the last day for those unable to secure a new position.
The tech giant laid off thousands throughout 2023, beginning with a 6% reduction of its global workforce (about 12,000 people) last January.
Discord is laying off 170 employees.
Discord employees learned about the layoffs in an all-hands meeting and a memo sent by CEO Jason Citron in early January.
“We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020,” Citron said in the memo. “As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.”
In August 2023, Discord reduced its headcount by 4%. According to CNBC, the company was valued at $15 billion in 2021.
Citi will cut 20,000 from its staff as part of its corporate overhaul.
The layoffs announced in January are part of a larger Citigroup initiative to restructure the business and could leave the company with a remaining head count of 180,000 — excluding its Mexico operations.
In an earnings call that month, the bank said that layoffs could save the company up to $2.5 billion after it suffered a “very disappointing” final quarter last year.
Amazon-owned Twitch also announced job cuts.
Twitch announced on January 10 that it would cut 500 jobs, affecting over a third of the employees at the live-streaming company.
CEO Dan Clancy announced the layoffs in a memo, telling staff that while the company has tried to cut costs, the operation is “meaningfully” bigger than necessary.
“As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible,” Clancy wrote. “Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch.”
BlackRock is planning to cut 3% of its staff.
Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive, and Rob Kapito, the firm’s president, announced in January that the layoffs would affect around 600 people from its workforce of about 20,000.
However, the company has plans to expand in other areas to support growth in its overseas markets.
“As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources,” the company leaders said in a memo.
Rent the Runway is slashing 10% of its corporate jobs as part of a restructuring.
In the fashion company’s January announcement, COO and president Anushka Salinas said she will also be leaving the firm, Fast Company reported.
Unity Software is eliminating 25% of its workforce.
Around 1,800 jobs at the video game software company will be affected by the layoffs announced, Reuters reported in January.
eBay is cutting 1,000 jobs.
In a January 23 memo, CEO Jamie Iannone told employees that the eBay layoffs will affect about 9% of the company’s workforce.
Iannone told employees that layoffs were necessary as the company’s “overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.”
The company also plans to scale back on contractors.
Microsoft is reducing its headcount by 1,900 at Activision, Xbox, and ZeniMax.
In late January, nearly three months after Microsoft acquired video game firm Activision Blizzard, the company announced layoffs in its gaming divisions. The layoffs mostly affect employees at Activision Blizzard.
“As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in a memo obtained by The Verge.
The cuts come a year after the tech giant announced it was reducing its workforce by 10,000 employees. It then slashed a further 1,000 roles across sales and customer service teams in July 2023.
Salesforce is cutting 700 employees across the company, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Salesforce announced a round of layoffs that the company says will affect 1% of its global workforce, The Journal reported in late January.
The cuts followed a wave of cuts at the cloud giant last year. In 2023, Marc Benioff’s company laid off about 10% of its total workforce — or roughly 7,000 jobs. The CEO said the company over-hired during the pandemic.
Flexport lays off 15% of its workers.
In late January, the US logistics startup laid off 15% of its staff which is around 400 workers.
The move came after Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen initiated a 20% reduction of its workforce of an estimated 2,600 employees in October.
Flexport kicked off 2024 with the announcement that it raised $260 million from Shopify and made “massive progress toward returning Flexport to profitability.”
iRobot is laying off around 350 employees and founder Colin Angle will step down as chairman and CEO.
The company behind the Roomba Vacuum announced layoffs in late January around the same time Amazon decided not to go through with its proposed acquisition of the company, the Associated Press reported.
UPS will cut 12,000 jobs in 2024.
The UPS layoffs will affect 14% of the company’s 85,000 managers and could save the company $1 billion in 2024, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said during a January earnings call.
Paypal CEO Alex Chriss announced the company would lay off 9% of its workforce.
Announced in late January, this round of layoffs will affect about 2,500 employees at the payment processing company.
“We are doing this to right-size our business, allowing us to move with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive profitable growth,” CEO Alex Chriss wrote in a January memo. “At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth.”
Okta is cutting roughly 7% of its workforce.
The digital-access-management company announced its plans for a “restructuring plan intended to improve operating efficiencies and strengthen the Company’s commitment to profitable growth” in an SEC filing in February.
The cuts will impact roughly 400 employees.
Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told staff in a memo that “costs are still too high,” CNBC reported.
Snap has announced more layoffs.
The company behind Snapchat announced in February that it’s reducing its global workforce by 10%, according to an SEC filing.
Estée Lauder said it will eliminate up to 3,100 positions.
The cosmetics company announced in February that it would be cutting 3% to 5% of its roles as part of a restructuring plan.
Estee Lauder reportedly employed about 62,000 employees around the world as of June 30, 2023.
DocuSign is eliminating roughly 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.
The electronic signature company said in an SEC filing in February that most of the cuts will be in its sales and marketing divisions.
Zoom is slashing 150 jobs.
The latest reduction announced in February amounts to about 2% of its workforce.
Paramount Global is laying off 800 employees days after record-breaking Super Bowl.
In February, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish sent a memo to employees announcing that 800 jobs — about 3% of its workforce — were being cut.
Deadline obtained the memo less than a month after reporting plans for layoffs at Paramount. The announcement comes on the heels of Super Bowl LVIII reaching record-high viewership across CBS, Paramount+, and Nickelodeon, and Univision.
Morgan Stanley is trimming its wealth management division by hundreds of staffers.
Morgan Stanley is laying off several hundred employees in its wealth-management division, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, representing roughly 1% of the team.
The wealth-management division has seen some slowdown in recent months, with net new assets down by about 8% from a year ago. The layoffs mark the first major move by newly-installed CEO Ted Pick, who took the reins from James Gorman on January 1.
Cisco slashes more than 4,000 jobs amid corporate tech sales slowdown.
In February, networking company Cisco announced it was slashing 5% of its workforce, or upwards of 4,000 jobs, Bloomberg reported.
The company said it was restructuring after an industry-wide pullback in corporate tech spending — which execs said they expect to continue through the first half of the year.
Expedia Group is cutting more than 8% of its workforce.
Cutbacks part of an operational review at online travel giant Expedia Group are expected to impact 1,500 roles this year, a company spokesperson told BI.
The company’s product and technology division is set to be the worst hit, a report from GeekWire said, citing an internal memo CEO Peter Kern sent to employees in late February.
“While this review will result in the elimination of some roles, it also allows the company to invest in core strategic areas for growth,” the spokesperson said.
“Consultation with local employee representatives, where applicable, will occur before making any final decisions,” they added.
Sony is laying off 900 workers
The cuts at Sony Interactive Entertainment swept through its game-making teams at PlayStation Studios.
Insomniac Games, which developed the hit Spider-Man video game series, as well as Naughty Dog, the developers behind Sony’s flagship ‘The Last of Us’ video games’ were hit by the cuts, the company announced on February 27.
All of PlayStation’s London studio will be shuttered, according to the proposal.
“Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences – allowing PlayStation gamers to explore our worlds in different ways – as well as launching games on additional devices such as PC and Mobile, requires a different approach and different resources,” PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst wrote.
Hulst added that some games in development will be shut down, though he didn’t say which ones.
In early February, Sony said it missed its target for selling PlayStation 5 consoles. The earnings report sent shares tumbling and the company’s stock lost about $10 billion in value.
Bumble is slashing 30% of its workforce
On February 27, the dating app company announced that it would be reducing its staff due to “future strategic priorities” for its business, per a statement.
The cuts will impact about 30% of its about 1,200 person workforce or about 350 roles, a representative for Bumble told BI by email.
“We are taking significant and decisive actions that ensure our customers remain at the center of everything we do as we relaunch Bumble App, transform our organization and accelerate our product roadmap,” Bumble Inc CEO Lidiane Jones said in a statement.
Electronic Arts is reducing its workforce by 5%
Electronic Arts is laying off about 670 workers, equating to 5% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported in late February.
The gaming firm axed two mobile games earlier in February, which it described as a difficult decision in a statement issued to GamesIndustry.biz.
CEO Andrew Wilson reportedly told employees in a memo that it would be “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.”
Wilson also said in the memo that the cuts came as a result of shifting customer needs and a refocusing of the company, Bloomberg reported.
IBM cutting staff in marketing and communications
IBM’s chief communications officer Jonathan Adashek told employees on March 12 that it would be cutting staff, CNBC reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
An IBM spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that the cuts follow a broader workforce action the company announced during its earnings call in January.
“In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM’s global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with,” they said.
IBM has also been clear about the impact of AI on its workforce. Last May, IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expected to pause hiring on roles that could be replaced by AI, especially in areas like human resources and other non-consumer-facing departments.
“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period,” Krishna told Bloomberg at the time.
Stellantis is slashing 400 white-collar jobs
On March 22, the owner of Jeep and Dodge announced it’s laying off employees on its engineering, technology, and software teams in an effort to cut costs, CNBC reported.
Workers learned they were being let go through video calls after the car company ordered them to work remotely for the day. The cuts are set to occur on March 31.
Amazon is laying off hundreds in its cloud division in yet another round of cuts this year
Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs from its cloud division known as Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg reported on April 3.
The reduction will impact employees on the sales and marketing team and those working on tech for its retail stores, Bloomberg reported.
“We’ve identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact,” an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.
On March 26, Amazon announced another round of job cuts after the company said it was slashing ‘several hundred’ jobs at its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions earlier this year to refocus on more profitable products.
“We’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact,” Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in January.
This year’s cuts follow the largest staff layoff in the company’s history. In 2023, the tech giant laid off 18,000 workers.
Apple has cut over 600 employees in California
Apple has slashed its California workforce by more than 600 employees.
The cuts follow Apple’s decision to withdraw from its car and smartwatch display projects.
The tech giant filed a series of notices to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program. One of the addresses was linked to a new display development office, while the others were for the company’s EV effort, Bloomberg reported.
Apple officially shut down its decadelong EV project in February. At the time, Bloomberg reported that some employees would move to generative AI, but others would be laid off.
Bloomberg noted that the layoffs were likely an undercount of the full scope of staff cuts, as Apple had staff working on these projects in other locations.
Representatives for Apple did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside normal business hours.
Tesla is laying off over 10% of its workforce
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a memo to employees Sunday, April 14, at nearly midnight in California, informing them of the company’s plan to cut over 10% of its global workforce.
In his companywide memo, Musk cited “duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas” as the reason behind the reductions.
An email sent to terminated employees obtained by BI read: “Effective now, you will not need to perform any further work and therefore will no longer have access to Tesla systems and physical locations.”
On April 29, Musk reportedly sent an email stating the need for more layoffs at Tesla. He also announced the departure of two executives and said that their reports would also be let go. Six known Tesla executives have left the company since layoffs began in April.
Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive is reducing its workforce by 5%
Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, said on April 16 that it would be “eliminating several projects” and reducing its workforce by about 5%.
The move — a part of its larger “cost reduction program” — will cost the video game publisher up to $200 million. It’s expected to be completed by December 31.
As of March 2023, the company said it employed approximately 11,580 full-time workers.
Peloton is reducing its staff by 15% as the CEO steps down as well
Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is stepping down, the company announced May 2. Along with his departure, the fitness company is also laying off about 400 workers.
McCarthy is leaving his role just two years after replacing John Foley as CEO and president in 2022. Peloton said the changes are expected to reduce annual expenses by over $200 million by the end of fiscal 2025 as part of a larger restructuring plan.
Microsoft-owned Xbox is cutting more jobs
Xbox is offering some employees voluntary severance packages in May after shutting three units and absorbing a fourth earlier in the month. Microsoft had already made cuts to the division at the start of 2024.
According to Bloomberg, the offers were extended to producers, quality assurance testers, and more staff at Xbox-owned ZeniMax. Others across the Xbox organization were told that more cuts are coming.
Xbox president Matt Booty told staff in a May 8 town hall that the studio closures are part of an effort to free up more resources, Bloomberg reported.
Indeed is cutting 1,000 workers after laying off 2,200 a year ago
Careers site Indeed says it will lay off roughly 1,000 employees, or 8% of its workforce, as it looks to simplify its organization.
CEO Chris Hyams took responsibility for “how we got here” in a memo in May but said the company is not yet set up for growth after last year’s global hiring slowdown caused multiple quarters of declining sales.
Hyams said the latest cuts will be more concentrated in the US and primarily affect R&D and Go-to-Market teams. That’s in contrast to last year’s across-the-board reduction of 2,200 workers.
Walmart is axing hundreds of corporate jobs
Retail giant Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs and asking remote employees to come to work, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Workers in smaller offices, such as those in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto, are also being asked to move to central locations like Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Arkansas or those in New Jersey or California, the Journal reported.
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