Layoffs in the tech sector are accelerating. It took exactly three weeks for tech layoffs to surge to 300,000, according to our Layoff Tracker. Since late January, when the tracker hit 200,000 layoffs, another 100,000 job eliminations have been announced or completed. In contrast, it took five weeks for layoffs in the tech industry to hit the 200,000 mark, and four months for layoffs to hit 100,000 last December. The total number of layoffs since we began tracking since the financial crisis began in late August is 300,093.
The past few weeks have particularly brutal for the technology space, with substantial layoffs announced by Pioneer (10,000), Cisco (3,000), Panasonic (15,000), NEC (20,000), Electronic Arts (1100) and AOL (700). Even Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, who both managed to avoid layoffs in the past few months, were forced to make cuts to their workforces. And Google, who was immune to layoffs until late January, continued giving pink-slips in the past three weeks with the company’s exit from radio. Sadly, a few start-ups weren’t able to weather the storm, with eBaum’s World cutting all of its workforce.
Obviously the tech industry is not immune to the current economic climate, and if the past three weeks are any indication, things could still get worse for the tech space before they get better. Maybe that economic stimulus plan will help turn the tide.
If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it’s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article. (For who is hiring, check out our job board).
Below is a list of late January and February layoffs from our tracker:
- Total Layoffs: 426
- Total Employees: 300,093
| Company | Date | Location | # | % | Source |
| Sapient | February 14, 2009 | BANGALORE | 300 | 8% | THE TIMES OF INDIA |
| Google (Audio Ads) | February 12, 2009 | Mountain View, CA | 40 | Google Blog |
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| Pioneer | February 12, 2009 | worldwide | 10,000 | 25% | Reuters |
| Nokia | February 12, 2009 | Finland | 625 | Business-Standard |
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| AMCC | February 12, 2009 | 100 | 17% | Yahoo |
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| NetApp | February 9, 2009 | USA | 480 | 6% | U. K. Register |
| Cisco | February 5, 2009 | San Jose, CA | 3,000 | 4% | BusinessWeek |
| Wall Street Journal, News Corp. | February 5, 2009 | New York, NY | 14 | 2% | PaidContent.org |
| LA Times, The Tribune Co. | February 5, 2009 | Los Angeles, CA | 300 | LA Times |
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| About.com | February 5, 2009 | New York, NY | 19 | 10% | Rueters |
| Panasonic | February 4, 2009 | Tokyo, Japan | 15,000 | 5% | Bloomberg |
| THQ | February 4, 2009 | Agoura Hills, CA | 600 | 24% | SIlicon Alley Insider |
| Electronic Arts | February 3, 2009 | Redwood City, CA | 1,100 | 11% | TechTrader Daily |
| Bloomberg | February 3, 2009 | New York, NY | 100 | Reuters |
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| The Walt Disney Co. | January 31, 2009 | New York, NY | 200 | 5% | LA Times |
| eBaum’s World | January 31, 2009 | San Francisco, CA | 13 | NewTeeVee |
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| Broadcom | January 30, 2009 | Worldwide | 200 | 3% | scoalTECH |
| NEC | January 30, 2009 | Wordwide | 20,000 | 7% | NYT |
| Zazzle | January 30, 2009 | Redwood City, CA | 40 | 15% | TechCrunch |
| Freescale | January 30, 2009 | Worldwide | 2,400 | 10% | Austin American Statesman |
| Hitachi | January 30, 2009 | Worldwide | 7,000 | BBC |
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| Sierra Wireless | January 29, 2009 | Vancouver, BC | 56 | 10% | Fierce Wireless |
| Teradyne | January 29, 2009 | North Reading, MA | 532 | 14% | Boston.com |
| Toshiba | January 29, 2009 | Tokyo, Japan | 4,500 | EETimes |
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| Nexon Games | January 28, 2009 | Vancouver, BC, Canada | 90 | 100% | Gamasutra |
| AOL | January 28, 2009 | New York, NY | 700 | 10% | TechCrunch |
| Citrix | January 28, 2009 | 10% | Reuters |
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| SAP | January 28, 2009 | Walldorf, Germany | 3,000 | 6% | SAP |
| Parametric Technology Corp (PTC) | January 28, 2009 | 250 | 5% | Reuters.com |
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| Skyworks | January 28, 2009 | Woburn, MA | 150 | 4% | StreetInsider.com |
| Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati | January 27, 2009 | Palo Alto, CA | 113 | 8% | LAw.com |
| STMicroelectronics | January 27, 2009 | 4,500 | EETimes |
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| IBM | January 26, 2009 | Armonk, NY | 2,850 | 1% | WSJ |
| Texas Instrument | January 26, 2009 | Dallas | 3,400 | 12% | EETimes |
| Sprint Nextel | January 26, 2009 | Overland Park, Kansas | 8,000 | 14% | Bloomberg |
| Philips | January 26, 2009 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | 6,000 | 5% | AP |
| Fox Interactive Media | January 26, 2009 | Los Angeles, CA | 100 | 5% | TechCrunch |
| Unisys | January 26, 2009 | Global | 1,300 | 4% | Computing.co.uk |
It’s scary to see these numbers. Clearly no industry is safe right now since the economy is in such turmoil. But it has seemed to me that there are a number of businesses who are nervous and they started cutting jobs to free up money as more of a precautionary measure to protect themselves against revenue loss. And while this isn’t true for all companies, some are cutting because they are already losing money, I’ve experienced it firsthand where a company got scared and started cutting in order to minimize the damage from the “tough economic times”.
With budgets getting tighter and disposable incomes smaller the tech sector might see even deeper cuts sooner than we think. We’ve really been a society of full-time employees but that really looks to be shifting to a workforce of freelancers. At the end of the day however, these companies over extended themselves while trying to keep up with the tech industry’s momentum. All things must pass.
Have any of those companies hired people within the same time frame? The Ebaum guys were replaced, were they not?
They told us they were replacing all 15 of us with 4 people, who may have been on the payroll for months already, it wasn’t clear.
Thankfully, Eric hired most of us back the following week, and we launched our new site eBaum.TV, in less than a week.
Our hopes and thoughts are with the other 300k mentioned in this article who weren’t fortunate enough to have a boss that cares about them.
I am not surprised or shocked about it at all. It was long over due. I have been blogging about South Asia for 3 years and 3 years ago, foreign and Indian companies in India had to compete with attracting fresh graduates to their companies. Now, it is quite the opposite. I wrote about it here: http://www.sout...ied-about-jobs/
Well, the main problem is that in USA or in Europe or in Australia or in Japan, there is no clear vision about overcoming the problem. Most people have the attitude that the recession will get solved automatically thanks to the stimulus packages and bailout promises. You try to save the car industry or another industry by pouring billions of dollars and the car companies will continue producing cars. Who will buy them?
As for the tech sector, many tech companies thought that by relocating and outsourcing, they would be able to cut cost and make huge profit. They forgot one important factor. Ultimately, the consumers are in the US. A worker in China or in India may take part in producing a $30 DVD Writer but he/she can hardly afford to have one.
It’s things like that which make me glad I’m now an entrepreneur instead of a lead unix sysadmin. Wow. Scary is right when talking about those numbers….
The WSJ and LA Times would probably be humored that they are being considered “tech” companies.
New site to blog about companies you’ve worked for and also an index of hundreds of thousands of jobs… http://www.jobstoblog.com
Not to get more doom and gloom on this but what about all of the web 2.0 companies who will see their VC funding burn off this year? Are the VC’s going to step up and keep funding companies that aren’t making money in this economic environment?
Hopefully when this is all over the strongest and the best will rise out of the debris and push technology forward. But one questions remains: will we ever learn?
Since you are not tracking new jobs and since we don’t have a good baseline of layoffs in tech to start with, the layoff number by itself is meaningless. What would be much more interesting is NET GAIN/LOSS in Tech jobs. I suspect that number is still negative, but much smaller.
You might want to look at http://online.w...tml?mod=testMod
you missed JDSU.
I could have sworn that MSFT announced cutting 5,000 employees, but I don’t see a reference to it here…
Oh man, they left off Valleywag- make that 300,005.
Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about the first 10-15% of layoffs. A lot of companies use bad economic times to cut deadweight, and my guess is these companies aren’t laying off anyone valuable yet.
any news about the layoffs that happened last week at metaweb/freebase? a friend of a friend told me a lot of people were affected…
Its getting worse.. no industry, no market, no region is safe from this ecnomic meltdown. Its getting scary…
oDesk mentions this story in its blog post yesterday showing current state of the freelance economy. The summary is
The bad news is the same that you’re reading in every newspaper — full-time workers are losing their jobs, and companies are tightening their belts. The good news, though, is that there there is more freelance work than ever, and the smart, skilled freelancer is well-positioned to thrive.
See data at
http://www.odes...rding-to-odesk/
Here is what a group of laid off tech workers did.
I was laid off a while back and found that there were virtually no resources to help me. So, I got together with some fellow geeks and created a social network for laid off people. Kind of a Facebook on the dole.
Check it out: http://www.layo...portnetwork.com
Lots of people are contributing information about how they are surviving this horrible situation.
It sucks to be laid off. That’s why people have got to form their own internet businesses and be more independent.