(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Layoffs among United States employers increased by nearly 400% between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, as a result of Joe Biden‘s economy.
According to a Thursday report from executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, economic disruptions and increased overheads, coupled with increased cost efficiencies, are primary causes for employers dismissing large shares of their employees. As a result, layoffs have risen 396% between the first three months of last year and this year.
“We know companies are approaching 2023 with caution, though the economy is still creating jobs,” Challenger, Gray & Christmas Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger said. “With rate hikes continuing and companies’ reigning in costs, the large-scale layoffs we are seeing will likely continue.”
The Daily Wire reported that technology companies are responsible for 102,000 of the 270,000 positions nixed by employers. Those numbers mark the most severe layoffs in the sector since 168,000 workers were dismissed in the 2001 dot-com bubble and collapse.
Financial companies dismissed nearly 31,000 employees in the first quarter of 2023. Hospitals and manufacturers announced a combined 23,000 position cuts. Media companies eliminated more than 10,000 positions.
Technology firms — including Meta, Google and Amazon — started to fire their employees because the elevated consumer demand which followed the lockdown-induced recession began to slow. Crunchbase layoff tracker estimated that 130,000 workers have been dismissed from technology firms thus far in 2023, even after companies nixed about 93,000 positions last year.
The Daily Wire reported that “the layoffs were also prompted by entreaties from investors who have noted that inflated payrolls and diminished consumer demand are preeminent factors behind lackluster profits.”
For instance, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cited the “uncertain economy” as a motivating factor behind his company’s newly downsized payrolls.
“The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” he wrote in a recent memo.
