Why are corporations cutting managers? - by Arnold Kling
U.S. public companies have cut their middle-manager head counts by about 6% since the peak of their pandemic hiring sprees, according to a new analysis of more than 20 million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies. Senior executives, whose ranks have shrunk nearly 5% since the end of 2021, haven’t fared much better.
Meta cut multiple tiers last year as it eliminated thousands of jobs and asked some managers to move to nonsupervisory roles. Citi, which announced its restructuring in September 2023, trimmed its management layers to eight from 13 by March.
Some of the biggest cuts have been in human-resources departments, where head counts are down by more than 6% from 2022, the Live Data Technologies analysis shows.
Garett Jones once pointed out that a large share of a company’s work force does not produce widgets. Instead, they produce organizational capital.
