(Reuters) – Technology companies, crypto exchanges and financial firms are cutting jobs and slowing hiring as global economic growth slows due to higher interest rates, red-hot inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.

In a sign of a tough second half of the year, growth in the world’s largest economy, the United States, shrank for the second straight quarter, while in the euro zone business growth slowed sharply in June due to rising cost of living.

LAYOFFS:

Company name Date Layoffs impact Commentary

Alibaba Group March 16 About 39,000 staff Started firing employees in February. It discussed job

cuts with several business units that month and left it to

them to make specific plans, a source told Reuters.

Tencent Holdings March 16 10%-15% headcount In an internal meeting at Tencent at the end of 2021, CEO

Pony Ma told staff the company should prepare for a

“winter”, two sources told Reuters.

Tesla Inc June 3 Roughly 10% in “I have a super bad feeling about the economy,” CEO Elon

salaried staff Musk said in emails seen by Reuters.

JPMorgan Chase & June 22 Over 1,000 “Our staffing decision this week was a result of cyclical

Co employees changes in the mortgage market,” a spokesperson said.

Shopify Inc July 26 10% of its “Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I

workforce got this wrong,” CEO Tobi Lutke said, referring to a bet

on post-pandemic growth in online shopping that went sour.

Netflix May 17 150 jobs “While we continue to invest significantly in the

June 23 300 jobs business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are

growing in line with our slower revenue growth,” the

company said.

Coinbase Global June 14 1,100 jobs “We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year

Inc economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto

winter, and could last for an extended period,” CEO Brian

Armstrong said.

OpenSea July 14 20% of its “The reality is that we have entered an unprecedented

workforce combination of a crypto winter and broad macroeconomic

instability, and we need to prepare the company for the

possibility of a prolonged downturn,” CEO Devin Finzer

said.

Klarna May 23 10% of its “Since then (2021), we have seen a tragic and unnecessary

workforce war in Ukraine unfold, a shift in consumer sentiment, a

steep increase in inflation, a highly volatile stock

market and a likely recession,” CEO Sebastian

Siemiatkowski said.

Robinhood April 26 9% of its “Rapid headcount growth has led to some duplicate roles

Markets Inc full-time and job functions, and more layers and complexity than are

employees optimal,” CEO Vlad Tenev said.

 

August 2

 

23% of its

full-time “Earlier this year, I announced that we would be letting

employees go of 9% of our workforce and focusing on greater cost

discipline throughout the organization. This did not go

far enough,” Tenev said.

Oracle Corp August 1 “Thousands” of Starts to cut “thousands” of jobs globally to achieve $1

jobs in global billion in cost savings, a report in The Information said.

workforce Regions affected include the United States, Canada, India

and parts of Europe.

Beyond Meat Inc August 4 About 4% of global “The reduction is expected to reduce operating expenses by

workforce about $8 million annually, although we expect to incur

incremental one-time separation costs of about $1 million

in the third quarter,” CFO Phil Hardin said on an earnings

call.

HIRING FREEZES:

Company name Date Action taken Commentary

Apple Inc July 18 To slow hiring, The decision stems from a move to be more careful during

spending next year uncertain times, though it is not a company-wide policy,

in some units Bloomberg News reported, citing sources.

Meta Platforms June 30 Cut plans to hire “If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the

Inc engineers by at worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” CEO

least 30% to Mark Zuckerberg told workers in a weekly employee Q&A

~6,000-7,000 session, audio of which was heard by Reuters.

Twitter Inc May 12 To pause most CEO Parag Agrawal, in a memo to employees seen by Reuters,

hiring, review attributed the decision in part to a lack of confidence in

existing job Twitter’s ability to reach aggressive growth targets it had

offers to see if set in 2020.

any “should be

pulled back”

Lyft Inc Sept. 27 Freezing all

hiring in the

United States

through the end of

the year

Uber May 9 To scale back “We will treat hiring as a privilege and be deliberate

Technologies Inc hiring, reduce about when and where we add headcount,” CEO Dara

spending on Khosrowshahi said in a letter seen by Reuters.

marketing,

incentives

Snap Inc May 23 To slow hiring and “We continue to face rising inflation and interest rates,

push some planned supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform

hiring to 2023 policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine, and

more,” CEO Evan Spiegel said in a memo to employees.

Amazon.com Inc July 28 Company is

questioning its

hiring plans,

likely will not

hire at same pace

as in previous

years

Intel Corp June 8 Froze hiring in

the division

responsible for PC

desktop and laptop

chips

Source: Company filings, media reports

 

(Compiled by Chavi Mehta, Tiyashi Datta, Aditya Soni, Yuvraj Malik and Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Uttaresh.V, Anil D’Silva and Sriraj Kalluvila)