Mass unemployment: Big Tech lays off more than 70,000 workers so far in 2023

The Tech Giants are going through hard times and it is reflected by their massive layoffs. Spotify is the latest company to announce layoffs, but Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Twitter have also let go of a significant percentage of their staff.

So far in January alone, more than 75,000 employees have been affected, and since February 2022, have reached 315,584 people, according to a TrueUp tracker.

Spotify was the last of the companies to announce staff cuts equivalent to 6% of its workforce, representing a total of 600 workers.

"Over the next several hours, one-on-one conversations will take place with all impacted employees. [...] In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth. And for this reason, today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company," reported Daniel Ek, founder of the Swedish music company.

Microsoft also announced a few days ago that it will lay off 10,000 workers, almost 5% of its workforce. CEO Satya Nadella said the reduction is a response to "a weakening economy."

Google, the parent company of Alphabet Inc. also surprised employees by announcing that it would lay off 6% of its workforce, equivalent to 12,000 jobs, after acknowledging, like other companies, that they hired many people due to the high growth of their economy during the pandemic and that they are now facing a different economic reality.

A couple of months earlier, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, reported that it would reduce the number of its workers after losing 70% of its stock market value. The company let go of 11,000 employees.

At about the same time, Amazon cut 3% of its payroll, laying off more than 10,000 of its workers after also losing a significant percentage of its stock market value.

However, the first to make a significant reduction in its workforce was Twitter. In fact, the company now has just over 1,000 employees.

"What we are seeing is the end of the era of technology growth. Very high and even exponential user growth - as some predicted - is over," said Esteban Almirall, a professor at the Esade business school.

Criticism from the left

Due to the wave of massive layoffs at Big Tech, Congresswoman Mayra Flores posted on Twitter recalling how the "far left" criticized Elon Musk, Twitter's new CEO, when he announced his decision to lay off much of his workforce.

"Remember when the media and far left attacked Elon Musk for doing much less?" she said after pointing out the number of employees laid off by other tech giants.