Layoffs.fyi: 50,000+ workers have been laid off from over 200 tech companies since the start of 2024; some recently laid-off employees recall their experiences
Alex Koller / CNBC : X: @dimartinobooth and @grady_booch Forums: r/technews , r/Layoffs , r/technology , r/singularity , and r/business X: Danielle DiMartino Booth / @dimartinobooth : Difference between 2023 & 2024? White-collar layoffs have been augmented by mass retail closures. Now we arrive at plain vanilla recession. “It's a continuation of predominant theme of 2023, when >260k workers across ~1.2k tech companies lost their jobs.” https://www.cnbc.com/... Grady Booch / @grady_booch : “All told, 2023 was the second-biggest year of cuts on record in the technology sector, behind only the dot-com crash in 2001.” https://layoffs.fyi/ Forums: r/technews : Laid-off techies face ‘sense of impending doom’ with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash r/Layoffs : CNBC reports on laid off techies r/technology : Laid-off techies face ‘sense of impending doom’ with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash r/singularity : Laid-off techies face ‘sense of impending doom’ with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash r/business : Laid-off techies face ‘sense of impending doom’ with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2024 tally has risen quickly from January’s reported 23,670 cuts at 85 tech companies to more than 50,000 workers across over 200 companies. That extends a pattern that followed the sector’s more than 260,000 layoffs in 2023.
The story matters because the cuts are not merely aggregate figures: experienced and deeply technical workers have also reported difficulty finding new roles, suggesting the effects reach beyond the companies announcing reductions.
First-order effects
- More than 50,000 workers are immediately displaced across over 200 tech companies, expanding the pool of people seeking work after recent cuts.
- Affected employees face a more difficult transition when even experienced technical candidates report trouble being rehired.
Second-order effects
- A larger supply of laid-off candidates gives employers a broader hiring pool, while job seekers may increasingly look beyond tech for work.
- The spread of cuts across hundreds of companies makes layoffs a sector-wide labor-market issue rather than an isolated response by a few large employers.
Third-order effects
- If repeated broad-based cuts persist, tech employment may become less tied to the rapid post-pandemic expansion that preceded the 2022 and 2023 reductions.
- The pattern could make workforce flexibility and leaner staffing a more durable operating norm, though the corpus does not establish how long the current hiring weakness will last.
The trend: This is another data point in tech’s extended workforce reset, in which job reductions remain broad even after the sector’s 2023 peak in layoffs.