U.S. tech sector layoffs continue. Tech giants Disney and Lucid Motors were just a couple of the companies that announced sweeping layoffs in the past week.
Around 130,000 workers in U.S.-based tech companies (or tech companies with a large U.S. workforce) have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2023, according to a Crunchbase News tally. That number includes Disney’s 7,000-person cut and Lucid Motor’s 1,300-person workforce cut.
Last year, more than 93,000 jobs were slashed from public and private tech companies in the U.S. as they were forced to confront rising inflation and a tumultuous stock market. The economy has come to reckon with a culture of overzealous hiring and soaring valuations, and startups are now forced to carry themselves through a frosty market as venture funding becomes barren.
Tech companies as big as Google, Salesforce1, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have slashed jobs in the past year. Qualtrics, Carta and Verily have also cut roles, citing overhiring during periods of rapid growth.
You can find a comprehensive list of U.S. tech layoffs since the start of 2022 in the database above.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated more than 140,000 jobs were cut in 2022. We have updated the article to reflect the actual number
Notable U.S. tech layoffs are included. We only cover U.S.-based companies or companies with a strong U.S. presence.
We’ve included both startups and publicly traded tech-heavy companies. We’ve also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as Klarna, even when it’s unclear how much of the U.S. workforce has been affected by layoffs.
Layoff and workforce figures are best estimates based on reporting. We source the layoffs from media reports, our own reporting, social media posts and layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs.
We recently updated our layoffs tracker to reflect the most recent round of layoffs each company conducted. This has allowed us to quickly and more accurately track layoff trends, which is why you might notice some changes in our most recent numbers.
If an employee headcount could not be confirmed to our standards, we noted it as “unclear.”
A layoff is typically a permanent termination of someone’s employment, usually for cost-saving reasons by the company.
A mass layoff is when a significant number of employees are cut from a company’s workforce in a short period of time, often as a result of economic conditions.
Tech layoffs have increased in 2022 and 2023. Companies have given various reasons for conducting layoffs.
Many large tech employers such as Salesforce and Google parent Alphabet have noted that the recent layoffs follow several years of rapid hiring fueled by fast growth. Several large tech companies that have done layoffs have also cited a decline in their stock price, slowing sales and fears of a recession as reasons for downsizing.
Many venture-backed tech startups have also done layoffs, pointing to a slowdown in venture capital funding and falling startup valuations as factors in their decisions to conduct layoffs.
Tech layoffs will likely slow when we see more down rounds and when the global economy improves. In a down round, a company raises funds at a lower valuation than its previous financing round.
Startups that raised capital at inflated valuations in 2021 are more likely to need to conduct layoffs in 2023.
More than 140,000 U.S. tech employees were laid off in 2022. As of March 2023, more than 100,000 U.S. tech employees have lost their jobs this year.
Tech layoffs have hit across departments at many companies.
Google, for example, cut roles in its sales, recruiting, product and engineering teams. Amazon’s layoffs included jobs in its AWS cloud unit, at Twitch, and in its advertising department. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s recruiting department would be the first to see job cuts.
Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Facebook parent Meta have conducted the largest tech layoffs of the past two years, totalling tens of thousands of roles.
Follow tech layoffs news here and track which companies are cutting jobs with the layoffs tracker above.
Many tech companies continue to hire for open roles, despite layoffs in the sector. Find out more about Crunchbase’s Actively Hiring filter and how you can find companies with multiple open roles.
Crunchbase News also highlights recently funded startups that are actively hiring in our weekly Who’s Hiring feature. You can find all of our job market related news here.
Yes. Please cite Crunchbase News and include a link to this Tech Layoffs Tracker.
Our hope is that this database will be as comprehensive as possible, so if we’ve missed any companies or if your company goes through layoffs, please let us know by filling out this form.
This layoff tracker will be updated at least weekly, if not more frequently.
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