Amid a procession of job cuts by big tech companies that have entered tight management due to the global economic downturn, Apple, a big tech leader, is not reducing the size of its employees. Amazon has carried out the largest restructuring since its foundation, and Microsoft (MS) has come up with another layoff plan that greatly exceeded the size of the job cuts last year, but Apple is the only one holding out the job cuts.
CNBC, a U.S. economic media outlet, reported that big tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Twitter have been cutting jobs on a large scale since last year, citing the possibility of an economic recession, and that the total number of job cuts is already estimated to reach 60,000.
On the same day, Microsoft announced that it would cut 10,000 employees, mainly in the technology sector. Big Tech’s announcement of layoffs continues, with Amazon also saying it will fire more than 18,000 employees, nearly doubling from the previously announced 10,000 layoffs.
Earlier, Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it had fired 11,000 people, Twitter 3,700 people, and Salesforce, a customer relationship management (CRM) software company, had fired 7,000 people.
Apple is the only Big Tech company that has not announced plans to cut its workforce. CNBC analyzed the background because “Apple has not significantly increased its workforce over the past two years after the pandemic.” Since 2016, until recently, Apple’s annual employment growth rate has shown a similar trend.
As of the end of September last year, Apple had 164,000 employees, including store employees. During the pandemic, Apple’s workforce increased by only 7,000 to 10,000 people every year. This contrasts with Amazon’s hiring of 500,000 new employees during the same period. The increase and decrease was only 6.5%, which was significantly lower than other big techs such as Amazon (38%), Meta (30%), and MS (22%).
CNBC analyzed that Big Tech’s rush to cut jobs means that it is ending the boom of the past few years and entering a recession. Big Tech, which had expanded rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, became inevitable to reduce the size of their businesses as growth slowed due to the economic downturn. Major foreign media reported that big techs’ management cold wave will continue this year as online advertising sales and product sales, a key source of revenue for big techs, are hit by the government’s rate hike and tightening due to record inflation.
