On Thursday, November 3, Lyft (LYFT) said it would trim 13% of its staff, or around 683 people. Amazon announced a “pause” on corporate hiring after halting hiring in its retail division last month. And Apple (AAPL) has suspended hiring for jobs outside of its research and development, Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
You could make a case that this layoff news is more timely and better reflects the state of the labor market than the backward-looking jobs report for October issued today, November 4.
Certainly, the news of layoffs in the technology sector has been coming fast and furious in the last few weeks. For example, Chime Financial is cutting 12% of its staff, or 160 people. Dapper Labs, a creator of digital NFTs, has laid off 22% of its staff.
Galaxy Digital, the crypto financial services firm founded by billionaire Michael Novogratz, is considering eliminating as much as 20% of its workforce. Intel Corp. is cutting thousands of jobs and slowing spending on new plants in an effort to save $3 billion next year, the chipmaker said last week. Qualcomm said Wednesday that it’s frozen hiring in response to a faster-than-feared decline in demand for phones. Seagate Technology, the biggest maker of computer hard drives, said last week that it’s paring about 3,000 jobs. Payments company Stripe is cutting more than 1,000 jobs. And, of course, Twitter looks to be planning to eliminate 3,700 jobs.
The pattern doesn’t seem to be limited to technology companies. Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Thursday that job-cut announcements were up 48% year-over-year in October, with more layoffs “on the way.”
I guess this leaves us all looking for the November jobs number, to be released on December 2, for an answer on how big the lag, if any might be.
