Insurance Giant USAA will cut 300 employees in its latest round of layoffs, the company confirmed Wednesday, following major layoffs last week at Microsoft, Ochsner Health and autonomous delivery startup Nuro, as recession fears and high inflation continue to push employers to reduce their head counts.
USAA, the United Services Automobile Association, will cut 300 positions across “most of our offices and different functions,” a company spokesperson confirmed to Forbes, bringing the Texas-based automotive insurance company’s layoffs this year to nearly 800, as it “continues to make necessary adjustments to run a healthy business.”
Nuro, which had laid off 300 employees in November, will cut another 340 (roughly 30% of its workforce), TechCrunch reported, as the company’s co-founders Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu warn recent bank failures and recession fears have put a damper on funding and as the company embraces AI advances.
Louisiana-based Ochsner Health will cut 770 employees in both Louisiana and Mississippi (roughly 2% of its workforce), CEO Pete November announced in an email to employees, citing high inflation, increasing costs of labor and the end of Covid-era government relief funding.
Microsoft announced plans in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice to cut 158 employees from its Redmond, Washington, headquarters—separate from the 10,000 employees Microsoft announced it would release in January amid “times of significant change.”
Tom Leighton, the CEO of Boston-area internet company Akamai Technologies, announced plans in a call with analysts this week to lay off roughly 3% of the company’s nearly 10,000 employees, or 300 staff members, the Boston Globe reported.
San Francisco-based Twist Bioscience will slash 25% of its workforce (estimated to affect 270 employees), the San Francisco Business Journal reported.
Paramount Media Networks and Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios, the media divisions behind MTV, Showtime, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and streaming service Paramount+, unveiled plans on Tuesday to cut 25% of its staff and shut down MTV News as the company contends with “pressure from broader economic headwinds like many of our peers.”
In a financial report released Tuesday, Maryland-based pharmaceutical company Novavax announced it will cut one quarter of its workforce (estimated to affect nearly 500 of its just under 2,000 employees), as demand for Covid vaccines wanes, with CEO John Jacobs calling the decision “necessary to better align our infrastructure and scale to the endemic COVID opportunity.”
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn plans to slash 716 of its roughly 20,000 positions, CEO Ryan Roslansky announced in a statement, amid faltering demand, “shifts in customer behavior” and a “rapidly changing landscape.”
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke unveiled the layoffs—as well as a plan to sell its logistics arm to tech company Flexport—in a memo to employees, saying the company is adjusting to the “dawn of the AI era” and that it has the “best chances of using AI to help our customers” (layoffs are estimated to affect more than 2,300 of Shopify’s roughly 11,600 employees, according to PitchBook, after the company laid off another 10% of its workforce last July).
Unity Software will reduce its staff by roughly 8% and restructure “specific” internal teams, the San Francisco-based tech company announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, saying the restructuring plan will cost the company $26 million but position it for “long-term and profitable growth.”
Morgan Stanley’s cuts will reportedly affect more than 3.6% of its 82,000 employees and primarily impact banking and trading positions, multiple outlets reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, after financial filings revealed the company’s total revenue dropped by 2% to $14.5 billion over the 12-month period ending March 31, and just six months after it reportedly cut another 1,600 employees (Forbes has reached out to Morgan Stanley for confirmation).
Rideshare company Lyft unveiled plans to slash nearly 1,100 positions in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, just weeks after confirming a round of layoffs in a blog post and nearly six months after 700 people were laid off from the company.
Vice Media’s layoffs could affect more than 100 of the outlet’s roughly 1,500 employees, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal—making it the latest media outlet to conduct cuts, along with BuzzFeed News, ESPN, Insider Inc. and NPR.
Gap will cut roughly 1,800 corporate employees, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, as part of a restructuring plan that will cost the company between $100 million and $120 million, following an initial round of job cuts in September that affected more than 500 corporate positions.
Dropbox’s layoffs will affect roughly 16% of the San Francisco-based tech giant’s staff, the company announced in an SEC filing, citing slow growth, economic downturn and as the company embraces the “AI era,” which CEO Drew Houston believes will “completely transform knowledge work.”
Tyson Foods’ layoffs will affect roughly 15% of senior leadership positions and 10% of the company’s roughly 6,000 corporate jobs, according to regulatory filings, and come just over a month after the company announced plans to shut two plants in Arkansas and Virginia and cut another 1,660 employees, following an underwhelming financial report that showed operating income from its chicken business was less than half of what it was last year.
3M, the manufacturing giant known for its post-it notes and scotch tape, announced it was cutting 6,000 manufacturing jobs in an effort to cut annual costs by as much as $900 million, just months after the company cut 2,500 positions in January, 3M said in a statement.
Disney began laying off another group of employees, bringing the total number of cuts this year to 4,000 as part of the company’s plan to cut 7,000 positions (roughly 3.2% of its 220,000 global employees), Disney confirmed to Forbes—CEO Bob Iger had previously called the layoffs a “necessary step to address the challenges we face today,” in a conference call last month.
Red Hat, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based software manufacturer, started cutting 4% of its workforce, multiple outlets reported, with cuts estimated to affect roughly 760 of its 19,000 employees, according to PitchBook (Forbes has reached out to Red Hat for confirmation).
Deloitte will cut 1,200 of its more than 156,000 jobs in its U.S. workforce, the Financial Times reported, citing internal employee communications (Deloitte did not immediately respond to a Forbes inquiry for confirmation).
Whole Foods plans to cut several hundred corporate jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported an internal memo as showing, as the company aims to simplify operations and restructure some of its corporate teams, but it will not close any facilities or stores (Whole Foods did not immediately respond to a Forbes inquiry for confirmation).
Meta informed employees in an internal message board the cuts would start mid-April, while a source told Vox they could affect roughly 4,000 employees—part of the company’s latest round of layoffs Zuckerberg unveiled last month, affecting approximately 10,000 of its nearly 87,000 employees and bringing Meta’s total number of job cuts since November to 21,000.
Opendoor will cut 560 employees, roughly 22% of its workforce, in its latest round of cuts, after the online real estate company slashed another 18% of its staff in November, telling Forbes the company has suffered from high mortgage rates and has been “weathering a sharp transition in the housing market,” with a 30% decline in new listings from last year.
Accounting firm Ernst & Young is cutting roughly 3,000 employees based in the U.S.—less than 5% of its U.S. workforce and less than 1% of its more than 358,000 employees worldwide, according to PitchBook—over concerns with the “impact of current economic conditions, strong employee retention rates and overcapacity,” (Ernst & Young did not immediately respond to a Forbes inquiry for confirmation).
David’s Bridal laid off 9,236 positions across the United States, according to a notice filed to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor, the state where the company is headquartered, with the company’s CEO James Marcum saying the recent uncertain economic conditions and the post-Covid environment led to company’s choice to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and lay off a majority of their employees.
The extent of Best Buy’s layoffs is not yet clear, though sources told the Wall Street Journal the big box tech and appliance retailer informed hundreds of employees who had sold smartphones and computers at more than 900 U.S. stores their positions had been eliminated.
Redfin cut 200 employees “due to the housing downturn and economic uncertainty,” the Seattle-based company confirmed to Forbes, following two rounds of layoffs over the past year, including one in November affecting 862 employees (Redfin has more than 5,500 employees, according to PitchBook).
Walmart, the biggest employer in the country, laid off more than 2,000 employees at five plants, including in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas, just weeks after reportedly asking roughly 200 workers to look for other jobs at other company sites last month as part of an adjustment in staffing “to better prepare for the future needs of customers.”
McDonald’s plans to cut “hundreds” of employees in a restructuring plan, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources, after the fast-food giant closed its corporate offices for part of the week in order to conduct the layoffs—McDonald’s, which has 150,000 global employees, according to PitchBook, did not respond to a Forbes inquiry.
Hyland Software, the developer behind process management software OnBase, announced plans to cut 1,000 employees—roughly a fifth of its workforce—and reassess job responsibilities, as CEO Bill Priemer said the Ohio tech company “did not anticipate the degree to which inflation, rising interest rates and wage increases would impact our expenses.”
136,000. That’s how many employees were cut in major U.S. layoffs over the first three months of 2023—more than the previous two fiscal quarters combined, led by massive headcount reductions at Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, according to Forbes’ tracker.
Despite massive layoffs continuing at many large companies over the first few months of 2023, the U.S. labor market still managed to add 236,000 jobs in the month of March while the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% from 3.6% in February, according to Labor Department data—though it was the smallest increase in total employment since December 2020, sparking fears among economists that a recession could be underway.
Large U.S. companies ranging from tech startups to manufacturers, retailers and banks conducted a series of major layoffs last summer—with nearly 125,000 U.S. employees affected by cuts at more than 120 large U.S. companies between June and December, according to Forbes tracker. Employers feared high inflation and multiple rounds of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve could throw the economy into recession. Nearly half of those cuts came in the months of November and December, led by massive reductions at Amazon, which cut 10,000 employees, and Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, which cut 11,000 employees. Amazon and Meta both unveiled new rounds of cuts in March.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/05/17/spring-2023-layoff-tracker-usaa-slashes-another-300-employees/