Recent dynamics in the high-tech sector, especially in the software domain, show that the halcyon days of boundless innovation and exponential growth seem to have given way to a more somber era of widespread layoffs and uncertainty. Reflecting on the tempestuous years spanning from 2022 to early 2025, the industry’s stalwarts, once revered as invincible titans of technology, are now grappling with the harsh realities of economic and business model recalibration. In this blog, I present some metrics on the workforce reductions across the high-tech landscape, focusing on just a few companies that have executed recent austerity measures.
By examining the proportion of workforce reductions in relation to each company’s size, revenue, and profit margins, we will look at the relative impacts, seek to understand the factors behind the phenomenon, and the long-term outlook for an industry that has long been synonymous with boundless possibility. Let’s take a look at some visuals.
By percentage of the companys’ employees, X (formerly Twitter) and Meta (parent company of Facebook) had the largest layoffs at 49% and 29% respectively. Apple has been notable for having far fewer layoffs than other tech companies — while they have reduced some staff, particularly contractors, it’s not on the scale of the other companies listed. They were at virually 0%. The chart is sorted by percentage.
If we overlay the actual count of of layoffs over layoffs as percentage, we see that stats from another angle.
The above chart is sorted by number of layoffs for each company marked by a ‘X’ (scale on the right-hand y-axis). What that count translates to the total employee percentage of a company is shown by the pink bars for each along the same x-axis. In terms of sheer number of job losses, we see Amazon and Meta let go off most employees at about 29,000 and 25,000 respectively.
The number of employees each company had before their respective layoffs and after chart is below.
The chart above is sorted by number of employees before layoffs. The difference between the lengths of before and after bars is the number of layoffs for that company.
The top 6 companies by layoff percentages are shown in the following visual.
Factors Behind These Mass Layoffs
Analysts, and the companies themselves point to several factors that triggered this event almost simultaneously across the industry. Some of which are listed below.
Economic pressures: Such as inflation and rising interest rates. Companies say they’re forced to cut costs.
Post-pandemic, consumer spending habits shifted away from tech products and services, impacting revenue.
Pandemic effect/over-aggressive hiring: Many companies hired aggressively during the early pandemic years, and are now scaling back to adjust to the new normal.
Tech Shift: Rapid advancements in technology, especially in AI, have led companies to restructure and prioritize new skill sets.
Employee performance: Companies are focusing on performance management, letting go of underperforming employees.
Many tech companies have reported strong balance sheets and record profits during this period.
However, the argument is that even profitable companies are looking to cut costs to improve margins and invest in new growth areas. Rapid changes in technology and consumer behavior require companies to adapt quickly, and they need to restructure to focus on core competencies and emerging technologies (mostly, it means AI). Some roles that were previously human-driven, such as certain customer service positions, marketing automation, and content generation, are increasingly being replaced by AI systems.
Let’s take a look at revenues around the layoff period. I wasn’t able to get reliable data across these companies through end of 2024, but was able to get official Q3, 2023 data across all these companies, except X (formerly Twitter). Twitter, after being purchased by Elon Musk is now a privately held company and does not publicly disclose its financial statements.
All values in chart are in millions. For example, Amazon’s revenue in Aug 2023 was $134.4 Billion, whereas Snap (owner of SnapChat) had revenue of $1.1 Million. Chart is sorted by Revenues.
What about profit margins? Revenues tell us the total income but it doesn’t give us much idea of how much profit is actually made after all the planned and unplanned costs. If we compute profit margin using the formula: Profit Margin (%) = (Net Income / Revenue) * 100
and Net Income = Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) – OpEx – Taxes – Interest + Other Income – Other Expenses [where OpEx or Operating Expenses = Indirect costs such as: salaries + rent + marketing + support (customer service) + utilities + R&D]
then we can produce the following visual showing the profit margin for each company.
Chart is sorted by profit margin. Except for Snap, the profit margins across the board were generous and healthy. Snap had 34% loss and struggled with profitability despite growth in advertising revenue. Microsoft‘s growth was driven by Azure cloud services and enterprise software. Alphabet (parent of Google) saw strong performance in advertising revenue and cloud services. Recovery in digital advertising revenue. Growth in user engagement across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp helped Meta secure 24% profit margin; its cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, improved profitability. Strong iPhone sales, particularly in emerging markets. Growth in services revenue (App Store, iCloud, Apple Music) helped Apple. Cisco‘s earnings were supported by networking hardware and software sales.
The newest data since late 2023 show higher profitability for these companies.
As domestic layoffs continued throughout the period, the number of H-1B Visas issues continued to rise, indicating a increasing demand for foreign, specialized workers by domestic high-tech companies. The H-1B program of the USA is a way for domestic companies to hire foreign, nonimmigrant labor in specialty occupations. The number of these visas issued in the 2023 through 2024 in the high-tech industry is shown in the following visual.
The current limit on new H-1B visas is 65,000 per fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 available for foreign individuals with a master’s or doctoral degree from an institution of higher education within the USA. An H-1B visa generally lasts three years on initial approval and can be extended up to six years.
This raises the obvious question…
How come H-1B visas issued for high-tech software industry continued to rise while layoffs by domestic high-tech companies were significant?
The rise in H-1B visas issued to the high-tech software industry, despite significant layoffs, can be attributed to the following factors:
- Companies continue to seek specialized talent that is often not available domestically (especially in areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cybersecurity).
- Many of the top H-1B visa employers are outsourcing firms that hire foreign workers for less senior positions. These firms often apply for a large number of visas.
- Hiring foreign workers can sometimes be more cost-effective than hiring domestically (economic measure).
According to some critics, utilizing H-1B visas can be seen as a way to circumvent hiring practices that might otherwise favor domestic workers, especially older, more experienced professionals.
Trend & Outlook
The layoff trend starting 2022 continued into 2025, but at a slower pace. By 2025, layoffs have persisted but are more focused on restructuring and prioritizing roles, especially in areas like artificial intelligence, and some focus on under-performing employees.
It’s been a challenging period for tech workers, but there’s cautious optimism about hiring stabilizing and improving moving forward. While AI displaces some roles, it also creates new ones. We can hope that when the economy stabilizes, hiring could increase again, particularly in sectors related to AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.
According some analysts, the tech industry will likely continue seeing layoffs, especially in areas that are ripe for automation (like customer support, data entry, etc.). Some sectors—particularly those related to cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and AI innovation—are likely to remain strong and grow.
Apple has been notable for having far fewer layoffs than other tech companies. While they have reduced some staff, particularly contractors, it’s not on the scale of the other companies listed. Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, reported $5.36 billion in revenue in 2024, a 16% increase year-over-year. Despite this growth, Snap faced challenges in a competitive market and decided to streamline its operations. After the layoffs, Snap’s new business model focuses on core priorities such as community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality (AR) initiatives
With 2025 in its infancy, tech companies continue to announce layoffs within their workforce driven by performance-based job cuts and contiued shift toward automation and AI to fuerther cut back costs and boost efficiency. Many C-suite executives expect that the use of AI will significantly reduce the number of workers at thousands of companies over the next five years.
A survey of 1,000 US managers from ResumeTemplates.com found that 45% of companies anticipate layoffs in 2025. In addition to layoffs, and performance-based cuts implemented and ongoing in 2025, 31% of US companies currently have a hiring freeze in place, and another 13% plan to freeze this year.
32% of the companies surveyed are also reducing or cutting bonuses altogether, 17% cutting benefits, another 12% plan to reduce salaries.
The purpose of this article is to present the reality and developments within the high-tech industry through data, helping us better understand the trends in this dynamic sector without casting a spotlight on any particular employer. While the recent wave of layoffs across the industry may come as a shock to many job seekers, especially those new to the field, there is no need for panic. These workforce reductions, unprecedented in such a compressed timeframe, are part of the industry’s ongoing recalibration.
In the absence of a crystal ball, based on my professional experience and historical trends, I anticipate that the job market will stabilize, the pace of layoffs will slow, and employers will better predict hiring needs over the next few years. As the promises and benefits of automation and artificial intelligence become clearer with real-world data, companies will develop sustainable and growth-oriented strategies.
The outlook for the tech industry may not be as grim as it appears. Instead, it will involve continuous transformation for both companies and workers. New opportunities will emerge in innovative ways and areas previously unimagined. A balanced integration of automation and human skills, coupled with newly acquired expertise, will drive the industry forward, offering exciting prospects for the future.
Data Sources
businessinsider.com, trueup.io, wikipedia.org, fastcompany.com, apnews.com, visualcapitalist.com, crn.com, performancemarketingworld.com, ssti.org, theglobalrecruiter.com, and a few others.
