End-of-year job cuts are something that companies do to boost numbers and impress shareholders, causing harm to American workers and their families. In 2019, the fourth-highest year for job cuts in a decade, holiday layoffs totaled 44,569. Layoffs tripled during the holidays in 2020, but decreased in 2021. Then, in true roller-coaster-like fashion, increased again by 127% in 2022. How many end-of-year job cuts were made in 2023?
The list of companies that laid off staff in November and December of last year is long and includes some heavy hitters. Hasbro cut 20% of their workforce, Spotify reduced their staff by an additional 17% in their third round of layoffs, Paramount, the Ford Motor Company, Jeep’s parent company Stellantis, Amazon, and even TikTok’s parent company ByteDance all contributed the totals; 45,510 in November and over 50,000 in December. The concern is, will layoffs continue through 2024?
Experts are predicting that, while more job cuts are likely, the numbers aren’t expected to reach those of 2023. Many companies had increased their workforce by large numbers during 2020; Meta, Salesforce, Amazon, and Zoom are some examples. Individuals who left their jobs during the pandemic or began working from home had more time for social media, online shopping, and relied on video communications for work and personal. Time passed and our world began to normalize so the companies that added thousands of workers found themselves with fat payrolls and reduced profits and began cutting jobs, lots of jobs. Tech companies began mass layoffs in the beginning of last year that totaled over 250,000. The retail and medical industries cut thousands of workers in 2023 as well. Right now, the Federal Reserve Board is predicting a “soft landing” this year meaning they don’t believe we will go into a recession and feel that our economy is “plowing ahead faster than expected”. Yet more workers will lose their jobs in the coming months. How many remains to be seen.