Busy January:
Timeline
February 1FedEx
announced it will slash 10% of its officer and director team and “consolidate some teams and functions”—four months after the delivery giant unveiled plans for a hiring freeze and that it would close 90 office FedEx Office locations—in a move CEO Raj Subramaniam said was necessary to make the company a “more efficient” and “agile organization” (FedEx employs roughly 547,000 people, according to PitchBook).
January 31In a statement on Tuesday, online payment company
PayPal announced it would cut 7% of its global workforce (2,000 full-time positions) amid a “competitive landscape” and a “challenging macro-economic environment,” CEO Dan Schulman said.
January 31Publishing giant
HarperCollins announced it would slash 5% of its staff in the U.S. and Canada as the publisher struggles with declining sales and “unprecedented supply chain and inflationary pressures;” HarperCollins is estimated to have roughly 4,000 employees worldwide, with more than half of them working in the U.S., the
Associated Press reported.
January 31
HubSpot, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based software company, said it would cut 7% of its workforce by the end of the first quarter of 2023 in a Securities and Exchange Commission
filing, as part of a restructuring plan, with CEO Yamini Rangan
telling staff it follows a “downward trend” after the company “bloomed” in the Covid-19 pandemic, with HubSpot facing a “faster deceleration than we expected.”
January 30
Philips said it would cut 3,000 jobs worldwide in 2023 and 6,000 total by 2025 after the Dutch electronics and medical equipment maker announced
$1.7 billion in losses for 2022, as CEO Roy Jakobs added the company will now focus on “strengthening our patient safety and quality management.”
January 26
Hasbro said it would cut 15% of its global workforce this year (affecting roughly 1,000 full-time employees), as the toymaker’s revenue fell 17% over the past year “against the backdrop of a challenging holiday consumer environment,” CEO Chris Cocks said in a statement.
January 26Michigan-based chemical company
Dow announced it would cut 2,000 positions globally in a cost-reducing plan aimed at saving $1 billion, as CEO Jim Fitterling said the company navigates “macro uncertainties and challenging energy markets, particularly in Europe.”
January 26Software company
IBM announced it would slash 1.5% of its global workforce, estimated to affect roughly 3,900 employees, according to CFO James Kavanaugh,
multiple outlets reported, as the company
expects $10.5 billion in free cash flow in fiscal year 2023.
January 26
SAP, said it will lay off 3,000 workers—around 2.5% of its global workforce—in its earnings call announcing its
fourth quarter 2022 results on Thursday, but did not specify where those cuts would be made. The German enterprise software firm—whose U.S. headquarters are in Pennsylvania—said the layoffs were part of an effort to cut costs and strengthen focus on its core cloud computing business.
January 25
Vacasa, the Portland, Oregon-based vacation rental management company announced it would slash 1,300 positions (17% of its staff) in a SEC
filing as it moves to reduce costs and “focus on being a profitable company,” three months after it announced it would cut another
6% of its staff.
January 24
3M, the maker of Post-it Notes and Scotch tape, announced it would cut roughly 2,500 global manufacturing positions in a
financial report, as chairman and CEO Mike Roman said the company expects “macroeconomic challenges to persist in 2023.”
January 24Cryptocurrency exchange
Gemini is planning to cut 10% of its workforce, according to an internal memo seen by
CNBC and , with layoffs
estimated to affect 100 of its roughly 1,000 employees—its
latest round of cuts after it slashed 7% of its staff last July, and another 10% last May.
January 23
Spotify will lay off 6% of its workforce (roughly 600 employees, based on the
9,800 full-time workers it had as of a September 30 filing) and shares of the firm rose more than 5% in early trading as investors continue to largely digest
tech layoffs as positive news for bottom lines, while the company’s chief content officer
Dawn Ostroff will depart the company as part of the reorganization.
January 20
Google parent
Alphabet plans to cut around 12,000 jobs worldwide, CEO Sundar Pichai
said, citing the need for “tough choices” in order to “fully capture” the huge opportunities lying ahead.
January 20Boston-based furniture e-commerce company
Wayfair announced it would cut 10% of its global workforce (1,750 employees), including 1,200 corporate positions, in a move to “eliminate management layers and reorganize to be more agile” amid reduced sales—the company’s latest round of job cuts following it’s decision to cut
870 employees last August.
January 19
Capital One slashed 1,100 technology positions, a source familiar with the matter told
Bloomberg—Capital One did not confirm the number of positions that would be cut, although a spokesperson told
Forbes that affected employees were told they could apply for other roles in the company.
January 19Student loan servicer
Nelnet announced it will let go of 350 associates hired over past next six months, while another 210 will be cut for “performance reasons,” telling
Insider the cuts come as President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness program continues to stall after facing
legal challenges from conservative groups opposed to the measure.
January 18
Microsoft’s
cuts, which affect 10,000 employees (less than 5% of its workforce), come three months after the Washington-based company conducted another
round of layoffs affecting less than 1% of its roughly 180,000 employees, with CEO Satya Nadella saying in a message to employees that some workers will be notified starting Wednesday, and the layoffs will be conducted by the end of the third fiscal quarter in September.
January 18
Amazon, one of the biggest companies in the country, had outlined a plan to eliminate more than 18,000 positions (including jobs that were cut in November) starting January 18 in a
message to staff earlier this month from CEO Andy Jassy, who said the company is facing an “uncertain economy” after hiring “rapidly” over the past few years.
January 18
Teladoc Health will cut 6% of its staff—not including clinicians—as part of a restructuring plan the company announced in a
financial report on Wednesday, as the New York-based telemedicine company attempts to reduce its operating costs amid a “challenged economic environment.”
January 13
LendingClub announced it would lay off 225 employees (roughly 14% of its workforce) in a SEC
filing, amid a “challenging economic environment,” as the San Francisco-based company attempts to “align its operations to reduced marketplace revenue” following seven rounds of Federal Reserve
interest rate hikes last year and as concerns persist of a potential recession.
January 13
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek
announced the company, which had more than 2,500 employees as of October, according to PitchBook, will cut 20% of its staff in a message to employees, as the company faces “ongoing economic headwinds and unforeseeable industry events—including the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX late last year, which “significantly damaged trust in the industry.”
January 12
DirecTV’s cuts could affect hundreds of employees, primarily managers, who make up nearly half of the company’s 10,000 employees, sources told
CNBC, as the company struggles with an increase in the cost to “secure and distribute programming,” and after the company lost nearly 3% of its subscribers (400,000) in the third quarter of 2022,
according to the Leichtman Research Group.
January 11
BlackRock officials reportedly told employees the New York-based company plans to reduce its headcount by 2.5%—the company did not immediately respond to a
Forbes inquiry for further details, but in an internal memo obtained by
Bloomberg, CEO Larry Fink and President Rob Kapito said the move comes amid “uncertainty around us” that necessitates staying “ahead of changes in the market.”
January 11In a memo to employees,
Flexport CEOs Dave Clark and Ryan Petersen announced plans to slash 20% of the company’s global workforce (estimated to affect 662 of its more than 3,300 employees, according to data from PitchBook), saying the supply chain startup is “not immune” to a worldwide the “macroeconomic downturn.”
January 10
Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the U.S. announced plans to lay off 25% of its workforce (950 employees) in a company
blog post in order to “weather downturns in the crypto market,” after it
laid off another 18% of its staff last June.
January 9
Goldman Sachs could lay off as many as 3,200 employees in one of the biggest round of job cuts so far in 2023 as the investment banking giant prepares for a possible recession,
multiple outlets reported, citing people familiar with the job cuts.
January 9Artificial intelligence startup
Scale AI announced plans to cut one fifth of its staff, CEO Alexandr Wang announced in a
blog post, saying the company grew “rapidly” over the past several years, but faces a macro environment that has “changed dramatically in recent quarters.”
January 5Online apparel company
Stitch Fix will lay off 20% of its salaried staff and close a Salt Lake City distribution center, founder and interim CEO Katrina Lake announced in an
internal memo, after
laying off another 15% of its staff last June.
January 5Crypto lender
Genesis Trading reportedly laid off 30% of its workforce, according to the
Wall Street Journal, which spoke to unnamed sources—the company’s second round of cuts since August, lowering its staff to 145.
January 4San Francisco-based software giant
Salesforce will reduce its headcount by 10%, or 7,900 employees, CEO Marc Benioff announced in an internal
letter, amid a “challenging” economic climate and as customers take a “more measured approach to their purchasing decisions.”
January 4Online video platform
Vimeo announced its second round of cuts in the past six months, which affect 11% of its workforce (roughly 150 of its 1,400 employees, according to data from PitchBook), with CEO Anjali Sud attributing the company’s decision to a “deterioration in economic conditions.”