After seeing the shocking number of job cuts in 2022, the tech sector is struggling with a new massive wave of layoffs, much worse than last year. Over the past ten months, tech companies have laid off more than a quarter million employees. The biggest part of this jaw-dropping figure came from the retail sector.

According to data presented by AltIndex.com, retail tech companies have suffered the biggest wave of layoffs since COVID-19 hit, with more than 60,000 job cuts in the past four years.

The Number of Layoffs in the Retail Sector more than Tripled Since 2020

After tech companies picked up the pace of layoffs in the first months of 2023, all eyes were set on industry giants Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, who made the biggest job cuts and let go tens of thousands of their employees. However, hundreds of other smaller tech companies, from retail and food to the transportation and travel market, have also been forced to make painful cost-cutting measures, causing the highest annual number of job cuts the tech industry has ever seen, and leading to the shocking cumulative number of layoffs in the past four years.

As our charts based on data from Layoffs show, some sectors, like retail, consumer, and transportation, have been hit much worse than others. Over the past four years, retail tech companies have laid off more than 60,000 people, the highest number of all sectors. Statistics also show the annual number of layoffs in this market more than tripled in this period, jumping from roughly 8,000 in 2020 to 28,900 this year.

The consumer tech companies witnessed the second-highest number of layoffs, 58,500, or 18,000 more than the transportation industry, which ranked third on this list. Technology companies that operate in the food, healthcare, and hardware sectors follow with 39,700, 34,100, and 22,400 layoffs in the past four years.

Although the crypto industry has also been swept by a wave of layoffs in the past four years, the cumulative number of job cuts has ranked this sector on the back of the list. Statistics show crypto companies have laid off more than 13,300 people since the beginning of 2020, less than education, real estate, and travel companies. Sales tech companies ranked one place behind, with nearly 11,400 job cuts in the past four years.

More than 430,000 Layoffs Since 2020

As the pace of layoffs in the tech sector continues getting worse, so does the cumulative number of job cuts in the past four years.

According to Layoffs data, in 2020, tech companies laid off more than 80,000 people. After falling to less than 16,000 a year later, this figure skyrocketed by 940% and hit nearly 165,000 in 2022.

Over the past ten months, a shocking 245,000 people who worked in the tech sector have lost their jobs, turning 2023 into the worst year this market has ever seen. Moreover, this pushed the total number of layoffs in the past four years to a shocking 432,900. 

Source : Tech Companies