More than 120,000 global technology-sector employees have been laid off since the start of 2023, according to data compiled by the website Layoffs.fyi.
The website’s tally of 2023 global tech layoffs has gone up almost fivefold since mid-January.
Related: Palantir joins growing list of tech companies announcing layoffs
The data suggest that 2023 is firmly on pace to surpass 2022 for global tech redundancies, with 424 tech companies laying off 120,253 employees since the start of the year. Last year, 1,024 tech companies laid off a total of 154,336 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi.
Citing three people familiar with the matter, the New York Times reported that Twitter laid off another 200 employees on Saturday night, equal to about 10% of the roughly 2,000 people who remain at the company. MarketWatch has reached out to Twitter with a request for comment.
A host of tech companies, including Twilio Inc. TWLO,
In a blog post last month, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the layoffs as “a difficult decision to set us up for the future.”
See also: One laid-off tech worker’s odyssey: 5 months, 25 interviews and 100 job applications
Alphabet expanded to meet demand during the pandemic era but was later confronted with a different economic situation, Pichai said. “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
Additional reporting by Ciara Linnane.
