RALEIGH – Layoffs are accelerating across the U.S. economy, with tens of thousands of job cuts in the technology sector, a new report found. But it’s not just tech jobs that are getting cut.
U.S.-based employers announced more than 100,000 layoffs in January.
The report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., released on Thursday morning, found that employers across the United States had cut 102,943 jobs.
The Challenger Report Announced Job Cuts, January 2021-January 2023. Data and image: Challenger, Gray & Christmas
That’s an increase of 136% from the prior month, when there were 43,651 jobs cut.
And it’s more than five times as many job cuts announced in January 2022, data show.
In fact, according to the company, January’s job losses amounted to the highest monthly total since September 2020 and the highest January total since 2009.
“We’re now on the other side of the hiring frenzy of the pandemic years,” said Andrew Challenger, labor expert and Senior Vice President of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. “Companies are preparing for an economic slowdown, cutting workers and slowing hiring.”
NetApp, which has big RTP campus, is cutting 8% of workforce; PayPal cutting 2,000 jobs
Which companies are cutting jobs?
The technology sector is cutting back to begin the year, and those cuts mean that firms are announcing layoffs.
NetApp, which operates a large campus in the Triangle, announced it would cut 8% of its workforce. And Google and Microsoft, both of which have facilities in the region, have also announced a round of layoffs that total at least 22,000 workers across the two tech giants. So too has cisco. Financial services technology firm nCino, headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, also announced layoffs in January.
And IBM disclosed it would make cuts, as well, reported Bloomberg.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., the tech sector represents 41% of all layoffs announced in January 2023, with nearly 42,000 workers affected by layoffs.
Dr. Mike Walden told WRAL TechWire in January that many technology firms “overshot” in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and now those firms are paying the price.
But retailers are cutting jobs, too, with a total of 13,000 workers affected by cutbacks in the sector, the report noted.
Media companies are trimming workers, as well, the report found, as well-known publications such as the publisher of People Magazine is making cuts. So, too, is the Washington Post, which began to lay off workers in January. And Vox Media announced cuts in January, as well.
Tech firms ‘overshot’ in expanding jobs – now Triangle is paying price in layoffs
Tech layoffs may be even greater
But layoffs in the tech sector may surpass the figures tracked by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. According to Layoffs.FYI, which maintains a database of all publicly announced or media reports of layoffs in the technology sector, nearly 65,000 layoffs from U.S.-based companies were reported in January 2023.
Those layoffs come from 170 U.S. companies, but globally, layoffs in the technology industry are rising, as well.
That includes at U.K.-based Arrival, which has North American headquarters in Charlotte, which disclosed in January that the maker of electric vehicles now plans to cut its workforce by 50%, upping its number from 30% announced in 2022.
All told, there are 244 companies that have announced at least 79,900 job cuts in January 2023, according to Layoffs.FYI.
Nearly 23,000 additional job cuts fell between January 25 and January 31, according to the tracker on Layoffs.FYI.
And that shift comes after 2022, when there were 1,013 tech companies that decided to cut jobs in 2022, with at least 153,160 employees laid off, as tracked by Layoffs.FYI.
The 79,900 layoffs tracked by Layoffs.FYI is now more than half of the total recorded in the database for all of 2022.
