Despite Bay Area Tech Layoffs, Pace of Job Cuts Slows

Even as companies continue to reveal plans to trim hundreds of jobs in the region, tech layoffs in the Bay Area are actually on a downward trend compared to the first six months of this year, according to a compilation of WARN notices on file with California’s labor agency.

In fact, there has been a 58% decline in the weekly pace of job cuts for tech workers in the Bay Area that their employers have disclosed to the state Employment Development Department during the second half of 2024 compared with the first half of this year.

Since 2022, tech companies have slashed more than 48,500 jobs in the Bay Area, seeking to trim their workforces and increase efficiency in the post-pandemic era.

But despite the staggering number of layoffs in the nine-county region, there are some bright spots starting to emerge for the sector.

“The tech industry’s overhiring because of COVID may have finally started to level off,” said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former state EDD director.

But even with the possibility of improvement in the sector long-term, layoffs continue to jolt Bay Area tech workers in the short run, as shown by the latest filings with the state EDD.

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 tech companies to reveal plans for layoffs, according to WARN notices sent to the EDD. Together, the two companies are planning to cut 205 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.

Despite these most recent layoff disclosures, Bay Area tech cutbacks have slowed markedly. During the first six months of 2024, tech companies disclosed plans to slash more than 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.

It’s entirely possible that big-time cutbacks loom in the technology sector in the final two months of 2024 as corporations sometimes engage in layoffs toward 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 that 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 review of 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. They are scouting in a big way for workers in fields such as AI, network security, fintech, health tech, renewable energy, quantum computing, advanced robotics and autonomous vehicles.

“We often see job creation and job destruction in the tech industry at the same time, but we may be moving into a period of somewhat greater stability,” Bernick said.

(c)2024 Silicon Valley, San Jose. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.