On Wednesday, Disney (DIS) joined a long list of other major corporations to announce widescale layoffs -- during the latest earnings call, returning chief executive Bob Iger announced changes that include consolidation of its different departments into Parks, Entertainment and ESPN, and job cuts affecting more than 7,000 current employees.
The moves are expected to save $5.5 billion in costs.
An SEC filing shows that this represents 3% of Disney's workforce as of last October.
As talk of a recession looms and consumer spending weakens, multiple companies announced layoffs in the last six months. Between November 2022 and the latest series of cuts in January, Amazon (AMZN) laid off over 18,000 workers -- the largest since the retail giant first launched in 1994.
Amazon, Google And Salesforce All Joined The Layoff Game
"Companies that last a long time go through different phases," CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a Jan. 2 blog post blaming the economy for the decision. "They're not in heavy people expansion mode every year."
Early in January, cloud software company Salesforce (CRM) cut approximately 10% of its 56,600-person workforce amid what chief executive Mark Benioff called an environment in which "customers are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decision."
The company also said that it would be closing entire offices across the country as part of consolidation.
The word "difficult" predictably comes up again and again in executive explanations on why they let people go. Google Google CEO Sundar Pichai used it four times when announcing the decision to cut 12,000 roles in a Jan. 20 blog post.
Technology is a sector that has been seeing especially high numbers of layoffs. Amid lower spending on PC computers in particular, Dell (DELL) and Microsoft (MSFT) both recently announced plans to eliminate a respective 6,650 and 10,000 positions.
Data put together by Layoffs.fyi estimates that, since the start of 2023, technology companies alone got rid of over 95,000 workers.
This Is The One Major Tech Company That Has Avoided Layoffs So Far
Despite recently reporting the largest revenue drop since 2016, Apple (AAPL) has so far avoided any layoff announcements -- but also did not rule out that they may be necessary if all other cost-cutting resorts are exhausted.
"I view layoffs as a last resort kind of thing," chief executive Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal last week. "You can never say never. We want to manage costs in other ways to the degree that we can.”
Other large companies to recently announce layoffs include IBM TICKER's decision to cut 1.5% of its workforce on January 25, eBay (EBAY)'s elimination of 500 roles, and video messaging platform Zoom (ZTNO) 's whopping 15% workforce cut announced earlier this week.
While the widescale nature of these numbers may paint a grim picture of the labor market's future, the unemployment rate reported last Friday is still at 3.4% -- the lowest number observed since 1969.
Technology professionals laid off from big companies like Google or Amazon generally find work quickly -- many smaller companies are struggling to find talent and have funds to offer competitive salaries.
"We're seeing a lot of active hiring in the small to mid-cap tech companies all across the U.S.," Bert Bean, who leads the IT staffing firm Insight Global, recently told CNBC. "These companies didn’t overhire as much as their larger competitors did throughout the pandemic when the tech sector experienced rapid growth, so they haven’t had to resort to hiring freezes or layoffs."
This is an ongoing story that will be updated with more company names.
