Several companies announce January 2024 layoffs: Why are these employees getting laid off?
Various levels and amounts of company layoffs are starting to commence across the U.S. due to reasons including lower revenues and organizational rearrangements.
Numerous amounts of companies in industries such as technology, finance, shipping and travel are making significant changes to their respective staff.
According to a survey shared by Business Insider, 38% of business leaders believe their own company will deal with layoffs this year — and half of them say their companies will have hiring freezes.
UPS
The shipping company announced 12,000 layoffs this week, reporting a decrease in shipping volume in both domestic and international markets from the previous year.
Brian Hughes, the UPS director of financial and strategy communications, shared to USA Today that in 2023, dynamic economic conditions resulted in a $9 billion decline in revenue, year after year.
“2023 was a unique, and quite candidly, difficult and disappointing year,” said by CEO Carol Tomé, per CNBC. “We experienced declines in volume, revenue and operating profits and all three of our business segments.”
Hughes also shared to USA Today that the layoffs will occur around the world over the next several months, with 75% of them commencing in the first half of this year — although it wasn’t revealed which positions would be affected.
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American Airlines
The U.S. based transportation company announced this week the layoff of 656 customer support employees.
According to Fox Business, 335 employees in Phoenix and an additional 321 in Dallas-Fort Worth, who are part of the company’s various customer service groups, are to be laid off to reorganize the overall customer service experience and simplify it down to one source.
Prior to this change, customers with multiple issues had to contact multiple groups to handle each issue individually.
“As part of these updates, we are creating a new Customer Success team that will be dedicated to providing more convenient, elevated support to American Airlines customers with some of their most complex travel needs,” according to a statement shared by NBC 5 Dallas Fort-Worth, an NBC affiliate.
PayPal
On Tuesday, the financial tech company announced a roughly 9% cut of its workforce.
Forbes reported that approximately 2,500 jobs from its near 30,000 employees will be removed to eliminate filled and non-filled positions.
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss stated in a press release, “Specifically, across our organization, we need to drive more focus and efficiency, deploy automation, and consolidate our technology to reduce complexity and duplication.”
According to CNBC, the affected employees will be notified by the end of the week.
In addition, CNBC included news from the previous week of PayPal announcing plans to introduce AI features to its program, as Chriss calls it the “next chapter” for the company.
eBay
Last week, the e-commerce company stated it would be laying off 9%, or about 1,000 full-time jobs, from its workforce.
CEO Jamie Iannone shared a letter to the company’s corporate blog that the move is to “scale back the number of contracts” because “overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.”
As reported by CNBC, eBay shares went down about 4% last November, with Iannone stating, “Inflationary pressures and rising interest rates continue to weigh on consumer confidence and pressured demand for discretionary goods.”
The news comes shortly after eBay was fined $3 million in court over incidents of harassment to a Massachusetts couple.
