A lot of layoffs are going on...

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Open Source Intelligence:
My company announced roughly 2500 layoffs this month. Tesla announced today they are laying off 14000. Tech have announced a bunch of layoffs as a group the last year (link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/ ). I'm aware of it happening in orthopedics, pharma, and biotech. We've never had more war going on in the world post-Cold War than now and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are doing it.

I'm a little perplexed on cause. My company was a bit of a shock as we'd been publicly running gangbusters for a few years. Now all of a sudden out of the blue layoffs. The only thing plausible to me to is they see something bad coming.

Yoda:
Quote from: Open Source Intelligence on April 15, 2024, 10:53:00 PM

My company announced roughly 2500 layoffs this month. Tesla announced today they are laying off 14000. Tech have announced a bunch of layoffs as a group the last year (link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/ ). I'm aware of it happening in orthopedics, pharma, and biotech. We've never had more war going on in the world post-Cold War than now and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are doing it.

I'm a little perplexed on cause. My company was a bit of a shock as we'd been publicly running gangbusters for a few years. Now all of a sudden out of the blue layoffs. The only thing plausible to me to is they see something bad coming.

The most likely explanation is that the shareholders demanded higher profit margins. Tale as old as time, not sure why you're so perplexed by it. They've made the same decision corporate boards always make; pile more work on fewer employees to increase margins and free up capital for stock buybacks. You said it yourself: they're going gangbusters. Meanwhile, the chance of the US going into recession this year just DECREASED according to economists, so it's highly unlikely they see something bad coming.

Dan the Roman:
1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

Benjamin Frank 2.0:
Maybe they haven't seen this, and I don't want to mention names because I don't want to make this anything personal, but I do find it interesting that all the people who say to me when I bring up 'paranormal claims' that I'm just citing anecdotes haven't said that here, because that's exactly what all these reports of layoffs are.

How do we know that there aren't a handful of companies similarly hiring thousands of workers, or tens of thousands of companies each hiring a handful of workers?

Of course, these aren't anecdotes to those laid off, but until we see actual jobs data, these reports are nothing more than anecdotes.

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