The year has begun on a grim note for thousands of tech workers worldwide as global companies have already laid off more employees in the first five days of January than they did through the whole of December 2022.
According to data from tracking website Layoffs Tracker, tech companies globally have already announced layoffs impacting 28,096 workers till the 5th of the month. This is 64.5 percent more than the 17,074 layoffs announced in December.
Amazon, which this week announced layoffs impacting as many as 18,000 workers, accounts for more than half of the numbers so far.
Salesforce is another tech giant that has announced plans to lay off thousands of workers. In a regulatory filing, the company announced that it plans to cut 10 percent of its 80,000-strong workforce (around 10,000 workers will be laid off).
Data from Layoffs Tracker shows that 2,43,468 workers were laid off by 1,168 companies in CY 2022.
November 2022 saw the most layoffs, with a total of 71,416 people from 204 companies losing their jobs that month.
Meta, which announced plans to let go of 11,000 workers in November, topped the chart for laying off the most people in 2022. The social media giant was followed by HP, which announced that it was laying off 6,000 employees globally.
Going by the headcount bloodbath in the first week of the year, 2023 will be worse than 2022 for Tech.