Technology companies in May axed employees at the highest rate in two years, as rising interest rates and a stock market selloff squeeze startups and Big Tech firms alike.
Sixty-six tech firms handed out a whopping 16,800 pink slips last month. That’s more than the 13,600 layoffs across 52 companies during the first four months of 2022 combined — and the most employees to get the axe in a single month since May 2020, according to tech jobs tracking site layoffs.fyi.
The news comes after tech companies hired aggressively and competed fiercely for talent in late 2020 and 2021 as they were buoyed by low interest rates and surging stock prices. The money has since largely stopped flowing, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index down 23.2% this year and venture capital funding drying up.
John, a tech worker who spoke to The Post under a pseudonym, left a long-time tech job in March to join Bolt — an unprofitable checkout payments company that’s raised more than $1 billion in venture capital.
Less than a month into John’s time at Bolt, the company’s CEO told employees he was instituting a hiring freeze. Then last week, Bolt laid off John and hundreds of other employees through video calls, giving him six weeks of severance pay.
“I was barely there for two months,” John said. “I feel deceived.”
John and the thousands of other tech workers from companies including Netflix, PayPal, Getir, Klarna and Carvana who were laid off in May could have a difficult time finding new jobs.
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Large tech firms including Facebook parent Meta and Twitter have both frozen hiring altogether for some departments, while other companies including Microsoft, Snap, Uber, Salesforce, Instacart and Coinbase have slowed hiring.
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