Apple Lays Off at Least 600 Workers in its first wave of post-pandemic job cuts

Apple has laid off more than six hundred employees, marking the company’s first big wave of post-pandemic job cuts amid a broader wave of tech industry consolidation. The iPhone maker was largely spared from last year’s massive rounds of job cuts at Amazon, Meta, Google and other tech giants after a major hiring spree during the coronavirus pandemic, when people spent more time and money online.

Wind seems to have changed in 2024 for the company founded by Steve Jobs: according to the California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as WARN, Apple notified 614 workers in multiple offices on 28 March that they were losing their jobs, with the layoffs becoming effective on 27 May.

To comply with the WARN program, companies in California must file a report to the state for each address that includes employees affected by a layoff. The Cupertino company filed eight separate reports: at least 87 of the people worked at an address corresponding to a secret Apple facility for its next-generation screen development, while the others were located at buildings related to the car project.

At the end of February, Apple began to wind down both initiatives. The display program was shuttered due to engineering, supplier and cost challenges. The multibillion-dollar project to build an electric car was canceled amid indecision among executives about its direction and cost concerns. The iPhone maker had dedicated nearly 2,000 employees to its secretive car development program and managed to relocate some of them to other teams. Still, 371 employees were fired at Apple’s main car-related office in Santa Clara.

Apple – that has about 161,000 full-time equivalent employees – had been a notable exception as other tech companies slashed their workforces over the past two years. As growth slows after the months of lockdown, companies are focusing on cutting costs. Amazon announced a fresh round of layoffs. The video game maker Electronic Arts it is cutting about 5% of its workforce; Sony is leaving at home about 900 jobs in its PlayStation division; Cisco Systems revealed plans to lay off more than 4,000 workers and the social media company Snap, owner of Snapchat, announced it was slashing 10% of its global workforce.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/apple-layoffs-tech-iphone-workers-9f10788b1d3552385ee8c7b20209ce17