Tech Layoffs 2023: Nearly 150,000 Employees Affected After Amazon, Meta, Others Cut Jobs

The trend of widespread layoffs that swept the tech industry last year has continued in the first quarter of 2023 as the number of affected employees nears 150,000. The biggest chunk of layoffs so far this year has come from some of the world's top tech companies, including Amazon and Meta.

So far, 148,165 employees across the tech industry lost their jobs in 2023, according to data from layoff tracker layoffs.fyi. At least 503 tech companies have announced layoffs so far, and the firms range from various technology sub-sectors, including marketing, fitness, manufacturing, real estate, retail, human resources, finance and crypto.

The biggest layoff announcement this month came from Amazon, which on Monday said it will let go of 9,000 people, TechCrunch reported. The latest round of job cuts follows January's mass layoffs wherein about 18,000 jobs were eliminated.

Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said another 10,000 employees will be let go in the coming months due to uncertainty in the social media industry.

"Here's the timeline you should expect: over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, cancelling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post while sharing details of the announcement he made to employees.

Meta's latest layoffs followed November's mass work reductions that affected about 11,000 employees or around 13% of the company's total workforce.

Also this month, cloud accounting platform Xero announced it would reduce its workforce by about 15%, affecting around 800 jobs, citing the need to "streamline and simplify our organization."

Other notable companies that reduced their workforce in March were satellite radio company and Pandora owner SiriusXM, which shed 8% of its workforce or 475 employees, and software consultancy firm Thoughtworks, which laid off about 4% of its global workforce, affecting about 500 employees.

In January, another big tech giant, Alphabet, eliminated thousands of jobs. The Google owner said it would cut about 12,000 jobs globally due to the changing "economic reality."

Microsoft slashed 10,000 jobs the same month, citing changing consumer perspectives and purchasing behaviors. CEO Satya Nadella said at the time that consumers were looking to "optimize their digital spend to do more with less."

Apple remains the only Big Tech giant that has not announced mass layoffs. Tech observers noted that the iPhone maker has resorted to hiring freezes across many positions outside research and development as part of its efforts to avoid mass layoffs while also cutting costs.