Tech jobs bloodbath rockets to 200,000

The total number of tech layoffs has reached more than 200,000 in the past year, as Google added to the carnage in Silicon Valley.

About 210,000 jobs have been cut since the start of 2022, with about 55,000 in the past two weeks alone, according to job data company Layoffs.fyi.

Google parent company Alphabet’s cuts yesterday boosted the already rising numbers and added 12,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of the global workforce, to that list of layoffs.

“Over the past two years, we have experienced periods of dramatic growth,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, told employees.

“To match and fuel that growth, we hired people for a different economic reality than today. I take full responsibility for the decisions that have led us here.”

Pichai’s fellow tech bosses have also made major headcount cuts in recent months.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter all slashed their workforce late last year, citing pressured ad spending and revenue slowdown as key drivers.

This month alone, Amazon, Microsoft and software giant Salesforce have significantly reduced their global workforce, demonstrating that this trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said: ‘Silicon Valley’s sense of invincibility led to a period of overzealous expansion during the era of rock bottom rates.

But the tech sector was quickly put back on its feet in 2022 thanks to rising inflation and interest rates, the waning tech boom during the pandemic era when most of us were glued to our devices, and a slowing global economic backdrop. ‘

iPhone maker Apple is the only tech outlier that has yet to announce major job cuts.