Goldman Sachs Is Preparing Layoffs. Tech Isn’t the Only Industry Cutting Jobs.

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Goldman Sachs

is putting together a plan to lay off employees, according to media reports, becoming one of the first major U.S. big banks to cut workers.

The job cuts will affect employees across the company, according to The New York Times and Bloomberg, which both cited people familiar with the plans.

Goldman Sachs

(ticker:

GS

), which could let go of employees as soon as next week, had paused its program of rightsizing the workforce during Covid-19; it would typically lay off 1% to 5% of its employees based on performance and other factors every year, according to the Times.

The stock rose 0.6% to $342.29 in Monday afternoon trading.

Technology companies were the first to lay off employees.

Microsoft

(MSFT) said during the summer it notified a small number of employees that their roles had been eliminated.

Snap

(SNAP),

Netflix

(NFLX), and

Shopify

(SHOP) also have announced plans to cut their workforces.

For Goldman, specifically, the problem could be the slowdown in deal-making. Through late July, some $1 trillion of deals were announced in the U.S., according to Dealogic, down 40% from last year’s busy season.

During its earnings call in July, the bank warned investors that it would slow hiring while it re-examined its spending and investment plans. Denis Coleman, chief financial offer, alluded to Goldman reinstating its annual performance review by end of the year. The cuts to expenses would take some time to be reflected in the results, he added.

Goldman showered employees with salary increases last year. The bank paid out an extra $4.4 billion in compensation for 2021 after revenue hit a record $59 billion.

Venture capitalist and

Facebook

board member Marc Andreessen said on Twitter in mid-April that all “good big companies are overstaffed by 2x [whereas] [t]he bad big companies are overstaffed by 4x or more.”

Since his comment, more than 100,000 tech companies have announced layoffs, according to tracker Layoffs.fyi. Comparatively, roughly 22 non-tech companies have announced layoffs since June—that number might look different if market conditions don’t improve.

Write to Karishma Vanjani at [email protected]