Silicon Valley Slump: 1,600 Tech Workers Laid Off Per Day in 2023

On average, 1,600 tech workers have been laid off every single day in 2023 according to a recent report. The ongoing Silicon Valley slump has caused the Masters of the Universe including Facebook, Amazon, and Salesforce to lead the way in cutting high-paid tech employees.

Business Insider reports that according to the tracking website Layoffs.fyi, the tech industry has experienced a sharp rise in layoffs at the start of 2023, with an average of 1,600 workers being let go every day. Just 15 days into 2023, 91 tech companies worldwide have already let go of 24,151 employees, which amounts to about 15 percent of the 154,256 employees who were let go by over a thousand tech companies in 2022.

Layoff.fyi notes that between November 2022 and January 2023, Amazon, Facebook (now known as Meta), and Salesforce will lay off roughly 18,000, 11,000, and 8,000 staff members respectively. The layoffs at Amazon primarily impacted corporate roles, including those in the company’s Devices and Books businesses and human resource department. Facebook also eliminated positions across the organization, including those in its Reality Labs division, which manages metaverse initiatives.

After aggressive hiring and expansion by tech companies during the pandemic, a wave of layoffs began last year. This trend has continued into 2023 as earnings declined across the board amid worries about an impending recession.

In the first week of the year, Salesforce announced it was eliminating over 8,000 jobs. The media company Vimeo and the supply chain software provider Flexport are two other tech companies that have reduced headcount.

Not only the tech industry is laying off employees. As dealmaking slows, financial giant Goldman Sachs began terminating 3,000 employees globally last week. For the first time in four years, BlackRock, the biggest asset management company in the world, is also eliminating up to 500 positions.

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce’s CEO, explained his company’s reasoning for the downsizing in a memo to staff, saying: “as our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.”

Read more at Business Insider here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan