Tech Layoffs 2023: Over 600 Companies Cut 173,000 Jobs This Year, Including Meta And Lyft

More than 600 tech companies across various subsectors around the world have reduced their workforce so far in 2023, bringing the number of people who've lost their jobs so far this year to more than 173,000. The latest companies to have cut jobs in the thousands are Facebook parent Meta and Lyft.

A total of 608 tech firms cut jobs as of Sunday, according to data from the layoffs tracker layoffs.fyi. The tracker recorded 173,880 tech workers who've lost their jobs as of Sunday.

The latest company that has slashed jobs is ride-hailing provider Lyft. The San Francisco-based company said last week that it would slash a "significant" number of workers as it enters a new regime with new CEO David Risher, according to multiple outlets.

The Wall Street Journal estimated that at least 1,200 employees would be affected by the layoffs. The affected employees would be notified of their employment status on April 27, Risher wrote in an email to employees that was shared with the public.

Departing employees will receive at least 10 weeks of pay, health coverage through Oct. 31, career support and additional weeks of severance pay for Lyft employees who've been with the company for more than four years.

Another company that reportedly laid off thousands of employees last week was Facebook's parent company, Meta.

Sources told Vox that the latest round of layoffs would affect about 4,000 jobs, and would be affecting technical jobs across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Reality Labs.

Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will reduce its workforce "by around 10,000 people" in the coming months. After this month's reductions in the technical department, "business groups" are expected to be slashed late next month.

Earlier this month, F5 CEO Francois Locoh-Donou told employees in a message shared with the public that the company was letting go of 623 people, or 9% of its workforce. Locoh-Donou cited the global economic downturn as the reason why the tech application services company had to "make measures to decrease our costs without jeopardizing our future growth trajectory."

Online real estate firm Opendoor Technologies announced that it was laying off about 560 employees or 22% of its workforce amid an ongoing decline in the housing market.

The company said new listings dropped by around 30% this year, in part due to higher mortgage interest rates. "We're taking these actions now to better align our operational costs with the anticipated near-term market opportunity," the company said in an email confirming the cuts.

Grocery delivery startup MilkRun was also among the tech companies that announced layoffs this month. The Australian fast delivery provider said in an email to staff that the company was winding down, citing the current market conditions. More than 400 employees will lose their jobs due to MilkRun's closure, as per The Guardian.

Also earlier this month, enterprise content management company Hyland Software announced that it was laying off around 1,000 employees or about 20% of its total workforce.

Hyland CEO Bill Priemer said in a message to employees that was shared with the public that the company was "removing layers of management" due to organizational restructuring. Affected employees will be invited to a Zoom meeting where information about severance, healthcare and other related matters will be discussed.

Last week, e-commerce giant Amazon confirmed to CNBC TV 18 that it would implement another round of layoffs that would affect employees in its advertising unit in June and July. An internal memo obtained by the outlet revealed that employees in New York and New Jersey were likely to be affected.

Paul Kotas, Amazon's senior vice president of Advertising, said the job cuts would affect "a small percentage of our organization," as per CNBC.

Other notable layoffs that took place this month were at Redfin and Apple, the latter having been resilient to layoffs in the past months. In March, Netflix was among the bigger companies that cut jobs, as per Bloomberg.

The bigger workforce reductions last month came from Electronic Arts (780), Lucid Motors (1,300), Indeed (2,200), Just Eat (1,700), Accenture (19,000), Amazon (9,000), Microsoft (559), and SiriusXM (475), according to TechCrunch.

In March alone, roughly 37,000 tech workers lost their jobs as an estimated 117 companies in the tech industry underwent workforce reductions.