As many as 219 companies globally have laid off more than 68,000 employees in January 2023, India’s financial daily Economic Times reported, citing layoffs tracking site Layoffs.fyi.

More than 3,400 tech employees are being laid off per day on average in January globally.

Tech giants Google, Microsoft, Amazon, SAP, Spotify, TikTok and IBM are some companies that announced sweeping layoffs. 

Earlier, Google announced that it will be slashing about 12,000 jobs. The job cuts represent about 6% of Google's global workforce. Microsoft is cutting 10,000 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce.

Companies including Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com, Twitter Inc and Snap Inc jointly removed over 97,000 jobs in 2022, rising 649% from 2021, to deal with the  economic slowdown and shareholder pressures, Reuters reported, citing a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.  

However, job portal Indeed said tech jobs are in high demand, with firms seeking full-stack developers followed by data engineers, cloud engineers, senior product managers and back-end developers, among others, Economic Times reported.

Only 12% of economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) anticipate employment will increase at their firms over the next three months, down from 22% this fall, CNN reported.

The findings revealed “widespread concern about entering a recession this year,” said Julia Coronado, president of NABE, as more business leaders anticipate jobs shrinking at their firms since the early days of the Covid pandemic.

(Editing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@lseg.com)