Tech companies have revealed plans to trim hundreds more Bay Area jobs but the current pace of staffing cutbacks in the sector are less than they were during the first half of 2024.
While 2024 is far from over, some benchmarks suggest the pace of tech layoffs in the Bay Area is greatly reduced compared with what occurred during the first six months of this year, according to this news organization’s compilation of the WARN notices on file with the state’s labor agency.
Upwork, the creator of an online marketplace for freelance workers; and Boston Scientific, a provider of software and hardware for the life sciences sector, are among the latest companies in the tech sector to reveal plans for layoffs, according to WARN notices sent to the state Employment Development Department.
Together, the two companies have disclosed their decision to cut 205 Bay Area jobs, all in the South Bay.
Here are some details for the most recent tech sector job cuts in the Bay Area, according to the WARN notices on file with the state EDD:
— Boston Scientific, 138 job cuts at the Sunnyvale offices of its Silk Road Medical subsidiary. These layoffs are slated to occur on Dec. 31 but could continue through June 2025.
— Upwork, 67 layoffs in Palo Alto. These job cuts are scheduled for Dec. 23.
The layoffs disclosed by Boston Scientific are one of the outcomes of its purchase in September for $1.16 billion of Silk Road, a medical device maker
“Boston Scientific will conduct layoffs at its facility … in Sunnyvale due to the company’s acquisition of Silk Road Medical and the associated transfer of production to other facilities within the Boston Scientific network in Minnesota,” Boston Scientific vice president of human resources Jill Swenson wrote in the WARN letter to the state EDD.
During 2022, 2023 and so far 2024, tech companies have disclosed decisions to slash more than 48,500 jobs in the Bay Area. This period marks the years in which tech firms have embarked on quests to trim their workforces and increase efficiency in the post-coronavirus era.
During the first six months of 2024, tech companies disclosed plans to slash just over 13,000 jobs in the Bay Area or an average of about 500 a week.
So far, during the final six months of 2024, tech companies have revealed decisions to cut about 3,600 jobs in the region, an average of 210 a week.
That’s a decline of 58% in the weekly pace of job cuts for tech workers in the Bay Area that their employers have disclosed to the state EDD during the second half of 2024 compared with the first half of this year.
Still, it’s entirely possible that big-time cutbacks still loom in the technology sector in the final two months of 2024.
Why? Corporations sometimes engage in layoffs towards the end of a year as they close out their books for the 12-month period.
Plus, a few weeks ago, both Cisco Systems and Intel disclosed they were planning massive job cuts to their worldwide workforces as they attempt to operate more efficiently.
Over the two years of COVID-19-spawned shutdowns in 2020 and 2021, tech companies dramatically increased hiring to meet the demand for products and services to enable people to work and learn remotely or from home.
Once the government-ordered shutdowns ended, that demand faded and tech companies were forced to cope with a surfeit of workers.
This has all happened at a time when the tech industry is being prodded to reinvent itself — yet again — this time to stake claims in the nascent gold rush into the artificial intelligence field.
These are the tech companies that have eliminated the most jobs in the Bay Area over a nearly three-year period that began in 2022, according to this news organization’s assessment of the WARN notices:
— Meta Platforms, 5,195 job cuts in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Burlingame, Sunnyvale and Fremont.
— Tesla, 3,652 staffing reductions in Fremont, Palo Alto and San Mateo.
— Cisco Systems, 2,649 layoffs in San Jose, San Francisco and Milpitas.
— Google, 2,507 job cuts in Mountain View, Moffett Field, San Bruno, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and San Francisco.
— Intel, 1,627 staffing reductions in Santa Clara and San Jose.
— Broadcom, 1267 layoffs in Palo Alto.
— Salesforce, 1,202 job cuts in San Francisco.
— Twitter, 900 staffing reductions in San Jose and San Francisco.
— PayPal, 772 layoffs in San Jose.
— LinkedIn, 711 job cuts in Sunnyvale, Mountain View and San Francisco.
Yet even in the face of waves of layoffs, tech companies continue to hire in certain areas they see as promising.
Tech companies are scouting in a big way for workers in potentially fertile fields such as AI, network security, fintech, health tech, renewable energy, quantum computing, advanced robotics and autonomous vehicles.