Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is the latest tech giant to announce a mass layoff.
The California-based firm plans to cut 12,000 jobs, the largest layoff in company history, according to The New York Times. Like other tech firms, the reduction comes after Alphabet embarked on a hiring spree during the pandemic but is now forced to cut costs amid the threat of a rising recession.
“We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a company note posted to its website.
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Earlier this week, Microsoft said it would lay off 10,000 workers by the end of the third quarter. Salesforce also plans to cut 10% of its workforce, with 700 of those 8,000 layoffs set to go into effect by the end of March.
It is unclear how big of an impact Alphabet’s layoffs will have on its office portfolio, though the closure of some small offices was an early indicator to employees that job cuts were imminent, per the NYT.
Prior to Microsoft’s layoff announcement, news broke that its Washington office footprint would shrink by thousands of square feet, including 585K SF in East Bellevue and 396K SF in Issaquah.
Alphabet announced plans last April to invest $9.5B into office space in major markets as a bid to bring remote workers back to their desks, according to The Street. That move was expected to create at least 12,000 new full-time jobs — the exact number of workers the company plans to cut in its impending layoff.
More than 190,000 jobs have been cut by technology firms since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi data reported by the NYT.
Some tech firms are opting for hiring freezes before resorting to layoffs. Tech job openings dropped by nearly 30% in 2022, while new hires were down by 23%, according to data from talent acquisition company iCIMS reported by USA Today.
More layoffs are probably still ahead. A December survey of 1,000 business leaders by ResumeBuilder.com found that 61% said they would likely have to reduce their workforce in 2023, while 57% of those business leaders said the cuts would likely encompass 30% or more of their employees.
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