While Joe Biden continues to attempt to convince America the economy is better than ever, the average American is living in the real world and things are not good at all.
Some of America’s largest and most valuable corporations are taking scalpels to their budgets and mass layoffs have begun in key sectors. Goldman Sachs is rumored to be axing 3200 jobs this year. Now come reports that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, will cut an astounding 12,000 jobs as they try to navigate the shrinking economy.
The layoffs are the company’s largest ever, accounting for 6% of the company’s global personnel, and comes after Google’s financial decision to defer a portion of employees’ January bonuses to be paid later in the year. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, shared a memo on Friday via the company’s website citing ill-hiring decisions over the past two years, which aimed to “match periods of dramatic growth.” He said, “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
American employees will receive a severance package of 16 weeks salary and 6 months of healthcare, among other parting benefits. Employees in other countries will be compensated “in line with local practices.”
After a year that saw over 154,000 American jobs cut, 2023 is well on its way to surpassing that. Amazon recently announced they would be eliminating around 18,000 jobs this year. Microsoft will scrap 11,000 jobs, joining Meta in the layoff carnage, which has plans to lay off the same amount of employees.
“In 2020 and 2021, technology companies went on a hiring spree, fueled by low interest rates and demand for tech products while people were staying at home during the pandemic,” Roger Lee, the creator of Layoffs.fyi, tells TIME. “Now that we’re in a completely opposite environment, these same tech companies are performing layoffs to undo their overhiring from the past couple of years.”
Other major corporations dishing out layoffs this year include:
Vimeo
Bed Bath & Beyond
Coinbase
The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
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