Microsoft’s business social network platform LinkedIn is discontinuing its China-specific jobs app, InCareer, and laying off 716 workers worldwide, citing unfavorable economic conditions, despite recently reporting 8 percent revenue growth year over year.
The Silicon Valley-based company will continue to “manage expenses,” CEO Ryan Roslansky said in a memo to employees, suggesting that more layoffs could be pending, Rohan Goswami reported for CNBC. The LinkedIn layoffs will affect about 3.5 percent of the company’s 19,000 employees worldwide.
More than 191,000 tech-sector employees have lost their jobs so far in 2023, according to data from Layoffs.fyi. That compares with 154,336 employees laid off by tech companies in 2022.
In the last six months, tech companies including Twitter,Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet have announced large layoffs. Labor experts say that aggressive hiring during the earlier days of the covid pandemic and the more recent economic slowdown are the reason for the layoffs.
LinkedIn went on a hiring spree in recent years, adding nearly 40 percent of its workforce during the pandemic, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The company has recently seen “seeing shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth” that made the layoffs necessary, CEO Ryan Roslansky said.
Along with the LinkedIn layoffs, the company is opening up more than 250 new roles in specific areas of operations, new business and account management starting on May 15.
LinkedIn started a Chinese-language version of its website in 2014, partnering with local firms and censoring the content of millions of Chinese customers in compliance with Chinese laws. Several U.S. journalists and activists said their profiles had been blocked because of “prohibited content,” New York Times reported. At the time, LinkedIn said it opposed government censorship but its absence in the country would deprive Chinese professionals of the chance to make professional connections.
Other tech companies that have announced layoffs include videogame publisher Electronic Arts Inc., streaming-media company Roku Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc., Twilio Inc., DocuSign Inc., Salesforce Inc., SAP, Zoom Video Communications Inc., eBay Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., International Business Machines Corp (IBM), Intel Corp. and Spotify Technology.
