Alphabet will cut around 12,000 jobs

Alphabet will cut around 12,000 jobs worldwide. Google’s parent company will lay off close to 6% of the workforce to address weakening economic conditions, the group's CEO Sundar Pichai said Friday in a message to employees. 

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It is the most significant layoff in its history and brings the number of jobs cuts announced by the big tech companies to 51,000. The biggest amounts of layoffs in the industry ever. 

The cuts will affect roles across product areas and regions, CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees posted on the company’s website Friday.

"We have decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 positions," Pichai said in a message made public in the early hours of Friday morning at Google's headquarters in Mountain View (California), after midday in mainland Spain. Pichai said that the company has already contacted by email with affected employees in the United States, while in other countries, "this process will take longer due to local laws and practices".

Affected US employees will remain on the company’s payroll for 60 days and receive at least 16 weeks' salary in severance, in addition to other benefits.

Alphabet grew its workforce by more than 50,000 over the past two years as booming demand for its services during the pandemic boosted profits. But in recent quarters, the company’s core digital ad business has slowed as the economic downturn, and recession fears caused advertisers to pull back their spending.

Not only Alphabet is laying off 

Microsoft announced this week that it was cutting about 10,000 jobs, and earlier this year, Amazon raised its layoff figure to about 18,000 workers. Last year, Meta announced 11,000 job cuts. Of the Big Five, only Apple has escaped massive job cuts, although it has slowed hiring and laid off some employees.

In addition to the so-called Big Tech, many other technology companies, including Salesforce, Twitter, and Netflix, have also undertaken layoffs. According to the website Layoffs.fyi, which tracks layoffs in the tech sector, some 39,000 have already been announced in the first 20 days of this year, adding to the 155,000 in 2022. That, even though the U.S. economy has the lowest unemployment figure in the last 50 years, at 3.5%.