Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, believes that the trend of layoffs casts a gloomy light on the job market, with thousands of employees confronting layoffs and companies reducing their workforces to prevent losses. In an interview with CNBC, the CEO of Apple stated that redundancies are the last resort for the majority of companies.
What is happening with the job market?
Concepts of great resignation, and quitting are swarming the corporate news world, but the news of layoffs is especially hard hitting as these actions terminate the chance to derive potential out of the employees. This wave of layoffs affecting the job market currently has job seekers around the world tense about their job prospects. It is important to note that layoffs occur for many reasons, primarily related to sustaining the company’s growth and health as long-term goals.
The workforce takes up a portion of the capital generated, when companies face financial storms and instability in the market, they may need to cut back on or reduce the cost of their workforce by maintaining the essential workers needed to hold the fort. For a business, labor costs can account for a huge portion of the capital generated. Primarily, any changes in the market, as we witnessed during the pandemic, lead to layoffs as businesses think ahead for the sustainability of their company.
It’s, however, not the only reason for layoffs. The recent layoff news from Amazon came out of nowhere and puzzled users worldwide, as the business announcing layoffs had made quite a profit during the pandemic. In such scenarios, layoffs occur to reallocate resources to areas where the company will expand or achieve more success. Layoffs become the trend when there is innovation in the market that renders the previous workforce and their job responsibilities null. Many major concerns with generative AI have been that it will ultimately create an issue with automation and the traditional workforce. Companies like Wipro, Twitter, and Amazon have announced mass layoffs, and this is sending a shock wave across the job markets.
There are some companies that refuse to order or issue layoffs, Apple has been the leading voice in this train of thought. According to an Economic Times article, Apple recorded a revenue of 94.8 billion, and Tim Cook mentioned that they would not require a recourse such as layoffs because they did not hire in bulk during the pandemic as compared to the other tech companies.
Apple is one of the few companies that has not announced any layoffs but has taken other measures to ensure that it does not suffer any losses, the ET report stated. According to People Matters, TCS, one of the largest IT corporations in India, said that it will not announce any layoffs, and moreover, the employees will not see a change in their salaries but receive the same number of annual bonuses as they received earlier.
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