Tech Layoffs 2024: Layoffs hit AMD, 23andme, Chegg
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Updated on Nov 21:
On Nov. 13, AMD, the world’s second largest maker of computer chips, announced it would be laying off 4% of its global staff.
On Nov. 12, Chegg, the education tech company, announced it would be laying off 319 workers, or about 21% of its staff. The company said its layoffs were largely due to students increasingly using generative AI.
On Nov. 11, 23andMe, the biotech company, announced it was laying off 200 workers or about 40% of its staff as part of a restructuring plan. In September, the company’s entire board of directors resigned over a conflict about the future of 23andMe.
On Nov. 7, Opendoor, a real estate listing site, cut 300 jobs, or about 17% of its total workforce.
Tech companies have been consistently laying off employees since late 2022.
As of Nov. 21, some 515 tech companies have laid off 148,000 employees in 2024, according to layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry.
A total of 262,682 workers in tech lost their jobs in 2023 compared with 164,969 in 2022. The volume of layoffs in 2023 — a total of 1,186 companies — also surpassed 2022, when 1,061 companies in tech laid off workers — and that total was more than in 2020 and 2021 combined.
Amazon saw the most workers laid off in 2023 (27,410 workers) followed by Meta (21,000), Google (12,115) and Microsoft (11,158).
These layoffs are an outlier in an otherwise strong job market: The unemployment rate hovered between 3.4% and 3.9% Dec. 2021 to April 2024, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Since then, unemployment has ticked up, hitting 4.3% for July.
And quit rates — which reflect worker confidence — this year are consistently at some of the highest levels in more than 20 years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Employment, at large, is doing well. But when layoffs are happening in the most visible sector on the internet, you’re going to hear about it.
What’s going on with layoffs in tech?
The biggest tech layoffs have occurred at high-profile companies. During 2024, the biggest companies with major layoffs included Microsoft, Google, Tesla, eBay, PayPal, Expedia Group, Intuit, TikTok, Salesforce and others.
Cutbacks in 2023 and late 2022 included mass layoffs at Accenture, an IT company; Amazon; Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram; Zoom Video Communications, Inc.; Dell; Spotify; Google-parent Alphabet; Microsoft; and Twitter.
Other big-name companies laid off employees in 2023 and they run gamut of what tech has to offer: crypto (Coinbase), e-commerce (Shopify), ridesharing (Lyft), online payments (Stripe), work management platform (Asana) and an online real estate broker (Redfin). The list goes on and on.
When did all of the tech layoffs start?
Roger Lee, creator of Layoffs.fyi, has been following layoffs in tech since 2020 as startups started laying off employees during the early days of the pandemic. According to Lee, the pandemic created an opportunity for people to increasingly turn to the Internet for work, shopping and socializing. In response, tech companies went on a hiring spree to meet consumer demand.
This growth in tech employment started in late 2020 and lasted through 2021. At the same time the Federal Reserve’s policy slashed interest rates throughout 2021, which enabled tech companies to raise capital and invest in growth, Lee said. But both trends reversed in early 2022.
The majority of layoffs at the beginning of 2022 came from startups, according to Lee. But in late 2022 and early 2023 it started to creep into bigger tech, as well. Lee also said that “Big Tech” layoffs like those seen at Meta and Twitter “present a unique opportunity to recruit a caliber of talent that would've previously been impossible to attract.”
(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images News via Getty Images)
