附近上门

After three months of sweeping layoffs, is the tech industry鈥檚 blaze of job cuts finally cooling?

Between January and March, largely U.S.-based tech companies managed to lay off more people than they did in the entirety of last year. There was a reprieve in April, as only around 6,330 employees were cut from the tech sector.

That鈥檚 a pretty dramatic 83% drop from March, and a low we haven鈥檛 seen since last December, when companies slashed around 4,000 workers.

Another count drops

It鈥檚 also worth noting only 34 companies announced layoffs this month, compared to 60 in March and 84 in February. Not only are fewer people leaving their tech jobs, fewer tech companies are actually making the move to cut employees.

That tracks, according to , an executive at the startup consulting firm . Fewer of his clients are laying off workers en masse in what was originally an effort to conserve cash and extend their runway. Some are simply opting to lay off one or two employees if they鈥檙e already not a good fit for the company.

鈥淎 handful of people are just not working out perfectly for them,鈥� Jones said. 鈥淟et’s move on from them and extend the runway a little bit. So it’s almost like an excuse to lay people off.鈥�

But I don鈥檛 think layoffs are tapering off any time soon. The on Wednesday, indicating both public and private markets will remain rather inactive for the foreseeable future. Most companies are still citing economic instability as the main reason for layoffs.

鈥淚f interest rates continue to increase, it’s going to make it very hard for companies to hire because they’re not going to be growing, they’re not going to be investing,鈥� said , an economist with workforce analytics company .

Startups are not done with layoffs

And keep in mind our layoffs tracker has recorded only 651 companies that reported layoffs since we began tracking the numbers in 2022, which means there are still plenty of companies that raised money at high valuations in 2021 that have yet to act.

We may see another deluge of startups announce mass layoffs as they eat through their runway.

鈥淲e’ve already seen a lot of pain in the late-stage market, and those failures are going to be more spectacular because instead of it being a 15-person company, it’s going to be a 500-person company,鈥� Jones said.

I鈥檓 keeping my eyes peeled for the seed- and early-stage companies. They鈥檙e small, and when they go under or announce layoffs those numbers aren鈥檛 as dramatic. But they haven鈥檛 raised as much money as the later-stage startups have, and I鈥檓 curious to see how they鈥檙e managing their runway.

We also wrote last week that the largest contributors to the deluge of tech layoffs 鈥� , , , and 1, which have together laid off 42% of all tech workers between 2022 and 2023 YTD 鈥� have walked back only 8% of pandemic-era hiring.

How long can these companies last with bloated employee numbers? We鈥檒l know more next month. Stay tuned.

Illustration: Dom Guzman