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Big Tech's layoffs and employment freezes pose a threat of recession

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Big Tech is preparing for a recession and an uncertain future. The result is more economic instability.

The biggest tech companies reporting quarterly revenue next week provide recent tips. News of layoffs and slowing employment is commonplace throughout Silicon Valley. Start-ups say they are running out of capital. Workers are beginning to notice that their business is changing.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s protracted bad romance with Elon Musk is intertwined in court, and the results are uncertain. Amazon is facing a growing labor movement and Facebook is facing a new advertising environment. National and international regulators are threatening to crack down on the industry as a whole.

Employment market is beginning to show cracks

Social media company Snap’s share price fell nearly 40% on Friday, the day after it reported lower-than-expected earnings growth, predicting future profits due to “business environment-related uncertainties.” Netflix has lost subscribers this week, repeating factors such as “slowing economic growth.”

Analysts also say that next week’s numbers released by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Apple could be the toughest signs to date on how these companies will approach in the coming months. I predict there will be. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported on Apple’s slowdown in employment and spending, a measure of how much consumers are willing to spend. This is news that has helped lower major stock market indices.

“The market is looking at it, and the logic is basically” Oh, crap, what if they’re doing this, what’s not that strong? “Tom Essay, president of Seventh Report Research. Stated. “And what do they see that no one else is?”

Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said the company will continue to make changes to some of its businesses as the economic environment expands. Apple and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment. Google, Twitter and Snap declined to comment. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Tech’s hiring freeze and pessimistic expectations are in stark contrast to the company’s traditional bulletproof reputation, raising concerns from some economists and Wall Street investors. Over the last decade, tech companies have skyrocketed, hiring tens of thousands of workers and accumulating huge amounts of cash through ever-increasing profits. Stock prices of companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google continued to rise toward the sky, dominating the stock exchange and enriching many investors.

As part of the world’s most valuable companies, the nature of businesses that rely on consumer clicks and spending also has a significant impact on economic perceptions. With declining demand for toilet paper sold by Amazon, Tesla and the iPhone, and fewer ads trying to sell new shoes and headphones on Instagram and Google search, there is no doubt that jitter will occur in other areas.

Tech has signaled investors for months ending the era of the boom — Amazon hired too many warehouse workers earlier this year and higher customer demand began to decline as a coronavirus. The blockade, which was one of the first tech giants to warn of overbuilding in anticipation, was lifted and habits shifted from pandemic mode.

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Tesla reported better-than-expected earnings on Wednesday, but even during that phone call, CEO Elon Musk and other executives were grilled by analysts on a potential recession topic. Earlier this summer, Musk said he had “very bad feelings” about the economy and hoped automakers would cut salaried workers by about 10 percent.

Google’s parent, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, said in a note to employees last week, “We are more entrepreneurial, more urgent, focused and hungry. We need to work with a sense of it. ” He said the company would reduce its desperate hiring pace and new hires would focus on engineering and other technical roles. “It is the responsibility of all of us to make the company more efficient.”

Earlier this year, Facebook reported for the first time a daily decline in users. This, combined with intensifying competition, lower earnings forecasts and hurdles in the advertising business, caused stock prices to plummet. The company’s stock price is currently declining by 50% annually. And Facebook last week told engineering managers to get rid of poorly performing employees in the face of recession. “If your direct reports are coasting or have poor performance, they’re not the ones we need. They’re failing at this company,” the company’s engineering director wrote in a note. ..

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft recently removed the open job list from online.

According to market experts, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy if other companies respond immediately to Big Tech’s buckling by tightening their businesses. However, the movement is not truncated. Many feel that technology is preparing for a recession and will not panic because of a plunge in business indicators.

Christina Hooper, Invesco’s Chief Global Market Strategist, said:

Various economic messages raise questions about recession risk

Big Tech was also more successful than many industries during the pandemic, giving them room to fall.

“We didn’t spend too much effort in the pandemic, so we didn’t have a similar shortage,” said Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard University. “So it’s not surprising, as in a sense the economy seems to be heading for a rougher patch that needs to be readjusted.”

Despite the low numbers expected next week, many companies have already lowered their expectations significantly, analysts said, and earnings may not be as bad as feared.

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Small tech companies have been alerting for months, with slower investment in new venture capital and many start-ups announcing layoffs from spring to early summer.

Other economic indicators show different situations about exactly where the economy is heading. Americans are pessimistic about highs, but they are still spending money. The pace of new hires isn’t as fast as it was a few months ago, but it’s still far from declining completely. Some economists and financial analysts predict a recession later this year or in 2023, but that doesn’t mean it will be as painful as the recession after the 2008 financial crisis.

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Doug Clinton, managing partner of tech investment firm Loup, said some of the tech industry cuts have been going on for a long time and new investment funds are free to use for so long that they aren’t necessarily a necessary resource. Said that it was bloated. Venture.

“When the world changes and capital is tight, everyone says,’you may not need as many staff as you think,’” says Clinton. “We were in a boom era, but now we’re off the roller coaster and we’re in a tough era.”

Kelsea Cozad, a marketing worker in Columbus, Ohio, admitted that “fast growth and lack of concentration” put a strain on the business, and then health tech startup Olive hired hundreds of staff. I was fired when I reduced it.

Cozad quickly tentacled to find a new job and said she had a good reaction. “There are a lot of people swimming in the ocean and trying to hire,” she added.

Job listings are primarily for the economy as a whole According to data from Indeed, a classified advertising website, it is stable. However, according to an analysis by Indeed economist Ann Elizabeth Konkel, job ads for software development have fallen by more than 12% in the last four weeks alone. The overall labor market is strong, but demand for tech workers in particular has slowed slightly, she said.

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LinkedIn economist Guy Berger said overall employment fell to its lowest rate since December 2021. “Tough financial conditions and softening demand could ultimately hurt the U.S. labor market. It suggests that there is sex. ” He said Tech was hit particularly hard.

Big Tech “has spent the last few years like a drunken sailor,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst. “I’m fixing it, seeing more as a tightening around the edges.”

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