Google is laying off 12,000 workers, becoming the latest technology company to trim staff after rapid expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic have worn off.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai shared the news Friday in an email to staff at the Silicon Valley giant that was also posted on the company’s news blog.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
He said the layoffs reflect a “rigorous review” carried out by Google of its operations. The jobs being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai said.
Laid-off employees in the U.S. will receive a severance package starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, as well as six months of health care, job placement services and immigration support.
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts, or nearly 5% of its workforce. Amazon is cutting 18,000 jobs and Facebook parent Meta is shedding 11,000 positions.
The technology industry shed the most jobs of any sector last year, eliminating nearly 100,000 positions in 2022, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
—This is a developing story.
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