To date, about 148,000 workers have been laid off, compared with a little more than 161,000 workers who were let go over the entirety of 2022, accordi

Tech layoffs in 2023 are about to surpass last year’s record numbers. It’s only March.

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2023-03-21 22:00:06

To date, about 148,000 workers have been laid off, compared with a little more than 161,000 workers who were let go over the entirety of 2022, according to data collected by Layoffs.fyi.

The number of layoffs in 2023 is especially striking in comparison to the previous few years; more people were laid off last year than in 2020 and 2021 combined. This contraction puts total layoffs at the highest since the dot com bust in the early aughts.

Amazon was the most recent tech behemoth to announce layoffs — saying in a message from Chief Executive Andy Jassy it will let 9,000 employees go by the end of April. That’s in addition to the 8,000 jobs the company cut this past January (and 10,000 cut last November).

Why is this happening? A combination of factors, Grid’s Domestic Economics Reporter Matthew Zeitlin reported earlier this year: higher interest rates, falling stock prices, investor pressure and declining ad revenue, to name a few.

With the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates low at the start of the covid pandemic, many tech companies grew rapidly, as much as doubling their head counts, in what NPR called an “industry-wide hiring spree.”