APPLE HAS REVEALED that it is laying off 614 workers in California. In a recent regulatory filing, the company disclosed it had about 161,000 staff (full–time– equivalent direct employees) worldwide in its fiscal year 2023 (down slightly from a peak of 164,000 in FY 2022). It is believed the layoffs are a consequence of the cancellation of its “Apple Car” development Project Titan, as reported last issue, but this is unconfirmed.
Tech companies grew rapidly during the period of the Covid–19 pandemic as people spent more time and money online, but Apple expanded more slowly than most and avoided the big cuts that many made subsequently — Microsoft laid off 10,000 in early 2023, Meta 11,000, and Google 12,000. Starting at the end of 2022 and continuing through 2023, Amazon cut more than 27,000 jobs across almost every part of the company, and has just announced “hundreds” more layoffs in its cloud computing division Amazon Web Services (AWS).