Amid fears of a looming recession, tech giants like Microsoft and Google, among others, comprise the growing list of companies who are laying off employees. Over 3,400 tech employees are being sacked per day in January globally, according to recent reports. As per the data presented by tracking site Layoffs.fyi, more than 68,000 employees were laid off by 219 companies in January. In 2022, 154,336 employees were laid off by over 1,000 companies, according to the same source.
According to reports, most business economists anticipate that organisations around the world will cut payrolls and downsize in the coming months. Many tech companies went on a hiring spree after lockdown restrictions were lifted in many countries and the markets started picking up, but this is the first time since the early days of the Covid pandemic that organisations are rapidly downsizing.
Additionally, there is bad news for Indians living in the US as Google has put its Program Electronic Review Management (PERM) on hold, an important pathway for obtaining an employer-sponsored green card. Google has notified its employees reportedly that PERM has been paused, thereby leaving many foreign employees in limbo.
“Recognising how this news may impact some of you and your families, I wanted to update you as quickly as possible on the difficult decision we’ve had to make to pause new PERM applications. This doesn’t impact other visa applications or programmes,” an email from a Google executive read.
According to other sources, it has been estimated that Indian tech companies may sack between 80,000 to 1.2 lakh people in the coming months. B.S. Murthy, Chief Executive of Leadership Capital, a CXO recruitment firm, told the Hindu, “Tech firms went into a hiring binge during the pandemic; now they have excess staff. The industry may lay off anywhere between 80,000 to 120,000 people over the next 2 quarters.”