Apple does not lay off massively … because it hires “slowly”
It’s been the same sinister music for a few weeks: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook (sorry, Meta), the GAFAM giants are announcing massive layoff plans, which each time concern tens of thousands of positions. In total, the GAFAMs have fired 51,000 people since the end of 2022! The only GAFAM not to have announced a “restructuring” is Apple, and this for a very simple reason if we are to believe the Wall Street Journal: Apple would hire much more gradually than its competitors, even in the midst of a growth phase.
Thus, the workforce of Apple increased by 20% between 2019 between September 2019 and September 2022 (164,000 employees to date), while during the same period, Microsoft increased the number of its employees by 53%, Alphabet by 57 % and Meta of 94%. The last time that Apple carried out a massive layoff plan dates back to 1997 and the return of Steve Jobs at the head of the company. Just over 4,000 Apple employees were then laid off.
In fact, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have been very opportunistic following the growth in activity recorded during the Covid-19 period, a period during which millions of people remained caulked at home and therefore favored the purchase of IT devices (to communicate remotely, to work from home, or to play). Apple also took advantage of this windfall, but remained much more cautious in terms of hiring, perhaps a question of corporate “DNA”. The Cupertino firm has indeed internalized the weight of the reversal of fortune, and knows only too well since the end of the 90s that any giant can have feet of clay when the context is no longer favourable…
