With over 425,000 employees being fired worldwide, 2024 has not been very forgiving either. Here’s what’s happening in the layoff trend two weeks into 2024.
After removing over 425,000 employees from their workspace, the layoff season has entered 2024 with equal or even more strength. In the first two weeks of 2024, over 7500 employees have been laid off by tech companies. The continued layoff trend is keeping the Indian workforce, especially in tech, on its toes.
Who’s Cutting Jobs Down?
The first mover of the layoff trend in 2024 is Frontdesk, an online rental startup platform that fired 200 employees in just a 2-minute Google video call. Google and Amazon join the big tech giants in the layoff league, with hundreds of job cuts announced in multiple departments.
The gaming company Unity, has also announced that it will lay off 25 percent of its workforce, which amounts to 1800 employees. Google has cut off people from its hardware, central engineering, and Google Assistant teams.
To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities. Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.
- Google spokesperson
A Bid To Cut Costs?
The main reason behind layoffs every company has revealed is cost-cutting and realignment of core business strategies. But is it the true reason? Why are companies still laying off people when tech innovation and expected CAGRs till 2030 of almost every industry are rising? The real reason we believe is Artificial Intelligence. AI has led to businesses realizing higher capabilities for longer, continued periods of time at much lower costs. The result? A huge number of layoffs in tech fields that AI can easily replace.
Boosted productivity, scalability, and better customer experiences have resulted in businesses adopting AI faster than their long-term promises. According to an IDC report, by 2026, businesses utilizing GenAI will experience a 20% hike in overall productivity. Business teams that use code generation copilots will increase their success rate by 70%.
All of these factors are making AI adoption a much more lucrative business route than traditional human resource investments. Whether the trend will continue is still unknown, but the job cuts are not likely to slow down anytime soon.
