Apple has laid off many of its contract-based recruiters after warning that it would slow hiring and rein in spending, according to a new report.
In the past week, Apple let go about 100 contractors responsible for vetting and hiring new employees, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on Monday.
The downsizing step was unusual for the most valuable company in the US, but follows moves by a slew of tech giants to cut costs in preparation for an economic slowdown, including Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Tesla.
Last month, Apple reportedly warned staff of plans to slow hiring and spending growth next year in some divisions.
Apple has reportedly laid off many of its contract-based recruiters after warning that it would slow hiring and rein in spending. CEO Tim Cook is seen above
Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, California (above) had about 154,000 full-time equivalent employees as of its last report
A spokesperson for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Tuesday afternoon.
As of its last annual report, the Cupertino, California-based company had about 154,000 full-time equivalent employees.
It comes after several months of rumblings in the tech sector, which has seen a sharp decline in stock valuations this year amid higher interest rates.
In May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced plans to lay off 10 percent of salaried staff, saying he had ‘a super bad feeling about the economy.’
Netflix, which has struggled with two consecutive quarters of net subscriber losses, cut headcount by 150 in May and another 300 in June.
‘While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth,’ the company said.
Oracle, the enterprise tech giant, said earlier this month that it was moving to cut ‘thousands’ of jobs globally to achieve $1 billion in cost savings.
Google parent Alphabet also said last month it would slow the pace of hiring for the rest of the year.
‘Like all companies, we’re not immune to economic headwinds,’ Alphabet said in a regulatory filing.
As well, CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned employees at Facebook-parent Meta that the company has cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30 percent this year.
Amazon is reportedly thinning the ranks of its hourly employees through attrition, and recently paused the construction of six new office buildings in Bellevue and Nashville.
A spokesperson for the online retail giant insisted that pausing and delay of construction will not affect Amazon’s hiring plans, reiterating the firm’s proposal to create 25,000 jobs in Bellevue and another 5,000 in Nashville.
‘If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,’ Mark Zuckerberg told employees during a companywide call in late June
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that the company will be ‘slowing down the pace of hiring for the rest of the year’
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Monday that from September 5 all staff must be back at their desks at least three days a week.
The Silicon Valley company first announced in May 2021 that staff would be required back in the office three days a week.
One of their senior leaders, Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, announced he was quitting as a result – arguing that forcing his team back to the office was not the most productive solution for his team.
He was hired by Google 11 days later.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has long pushed to get staff back to work and in a memo to staff, obtained by The Verge, said on Monday that the time had come.
‘We are excited to move forward with the pilot and believe that this revised framework will enhance our ability to work flexibly, while preserving the in-person collaboration that is so essential to our culture,’ Cook wrote.