Apple Axes Over 600 California Workers in Post-Pandemic Cutback

Apple is set to reduce its workforce by over 600 employees in California, indicating the tech giant’s initial significant reduction in staff since the pandemic, amid a general trend of downsizing within the tech sector.

The company informed 614 employees across various offices on March 28 that their positions would be terminated by May 27, as per documents submitted to regional regulators.

These layoffs are concentrated across eight locations in Santa Clara, with the details regarding the specific departments or projects affected remaining undisclosed.

Requests for comments from Apple went unanswered as of early Friday.

While other technology firms have been reducing their staff sizes over the last two years, Apple had remained an outlier. The tech industry experienced a hiring boom during the pandemic as the demand for online services surged. However, despite tech companies being larger post-pandemic, the slowdown in growth has prompted a shift towards cost reduction.

Apple reported having approximately 161,000 full-time employees in a recent financial disclosure.

This announcement comes in the wake of Amazon revealing another set of layoffs at its cloud division, AWS. Additionally, several other companies in the tech industry have announced workforce reductions, including Electronic Arts cutting around 5% of its staff, Sony eliminating about 900 jobs in its PlayStation sector, Cisco Systems planning over 4,000 layoffs, and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, reducing its global workforce by 10%.