On Thursday evening, Axios reported that Yahoo is set to lay off more than 1,600 of its employees. Yahoo’s job cuts equate to over 20% of its workforce and Axios reports that the cuts will hit Yahoo’s ad-tech division hard—with 50% of ad-tech employees set to be let go.
But unlike other tech giants that have shed tens of thousands of jobs over the last three months, Yahoo said financial challenges were not the reason for the cuts. Instead, CEO Jim Lanzone said the cuts were being made due to strategic changes surrounding the “Yahoo for Business” advertising unit. Lanzone also said that about 1,000 of the cuts have already been made, with the remainder happening in the second half of 2023.
Yahoo’s cuts come at a time when the tech industry is shedding jobs at an alarming rate. Many companies are citing a slowing economy, slowing ad revenue, or over-hiring during the early pandemic yearss—or a combination of all three—as the main drivers behind the layoffs.
Since late last year, nearly every tech giant has announced jobs cuts, including Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon. And this week alone saw the following tech companies reduce their workforce according to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi:
- Dell: 6,650
- eBay: 500
- Zoom: 1,300
- GoDaddy: 530
- Affirm: 500
- Github: 300
- Yahoo: 1,600
But not all layoffs came from tech companies this week. Some of the largest job cuts came from media giants. On Friday, News Corp. announced it will cut 1,250 jobs this year—about 5% of its workforce. Two days earlier, the largest layoff announcement of the week came from entertainment giant Disney; CEO Bog Iger said the company would cut 7,000 jobs across the globe.
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