According to calculations made by Lusa, based on information released by 12 of the main technology companies, most of them American, more than 74,000 jobs will be cut, including Alphabet, which owns Google, Microsoft, Disney and even Spotify.

If we add together the announcement of layoffs by Meta, owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, of 11,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, and that of Amazon, of 10,000 at the same time, the figure rises to around 95,000.

At the time, the head of Meta said that the aim of cutting these jobs was to make the company more agile and efficient in response to economic and business changes.

Right at the start of the year, on January 4, the US company Salesforce announced its intention to lay off 10%, around 8,000 people, and went ahead with a restructuring plan.

The software provider admitted that it hired too many people when revenues increased during the covid-19 pandemic and now "takes responsibility" for not having calculated correctly that the peak would end earlier than expected.

The following day it was the turn of e-commerce giant Amazon, which announced that it was laying off 18,000 people, a record number to be added to the 10,000 in November 2022, a decision that is the result of economic uncertainty and the high number of contracts made in recent years.

A few weeks later it was Microsoft's turn to announce that it was cutting 18,000 jobs, less than 5% of its workforce, with CEO Satya Nadella saying that the company is going through "significant changes", noting that when he meets with customers he notices that they are no longer "accelerating their digital spending", as was the case during the pandemic, but are instead choosing to "optimize their digital spending to do more with less".

These were Nadella's statements on January 18, only for Microsoft to announce a few days later (January 23) an investment of "billions" of dollars in the artificial intelligence technology company OpenAI, creator of the successful ChatGPT, a viral phenomenon that 'forced' competitors to develop similar solutions.

Meanwhile, in January, Alphabet, the owner of Google, announced that it would cut 12,000 jobs, or 6.4% of the total, after years of "spectacular" growth because it is now facing a "different economic reality".

After the Covid-19 pandemic, the world has been witnessing a war in Europe for almost a year now, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rising interest rates, unprecedented levels of inflation and high energy costs, among other macroeconomic challenges.

The announcement was made by the CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sudar Pichai, who also announced that artificial intelligence (AI) is a major opportunity for the technology company's products.

At the end of last September, Google had 186,779 people, more than 36,000 more than the 150,028 employees it had in the same period of 2021.

Just in January, Stockholm-based music platform Spotify said it would cut 6% of its staff, around 600, joining the wave of technology companies that are readjusting their workforce in the face of fears of a global recession. Spotify has around 8,600 employees worldwide.

Also on European soil, German software manufacturer SAP will cut 3,000 jobs, 2.5% of the total, to reduce costs by up to 350 million euros a year from 2024.

Just last month, IBM announced 3,900 job cuts and PayPal 2,000.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Dell, which mainly manufactures computers and their accessories, warned the market that it would lay off 6,500, the equivalent of 5%.

This reduction comes amid falling sales of personal computers, 55% of the company's business, and market conditions that continue to "deteriorate in the face of an uncertain future", according to an internal statement from the head of operations, quoted by the media.

With this reduction, Dell will maintain a workforce of 126,300, the lowest in seven years.

The Zoom platform, which became famous during the Covid pandemic for promoting the use of video conferencing, has joined the movement and will lay off 15% of the total, or 1,300 people.

Disney has also joined the wave of workforce reductions, this time cutting 7,000 jobs, around 3% of the total, with the aim of reducing costs.

Internet portal Yahoo, which was acquired in 2021 by investment fund Apollo, will cut 20% of its total workforce, around 1,600, according to media reports, following a restructuring of its digital advertising business.

These are just a few examples of the wave of redundancies sweeping the technology world, after a period in which thousands of jobs were created. Some say that this is a market readjustment.

According to data from Efe and quoted by Eco, in 2022, the big tech companies were responsible for laying off 150,000 people around the world, including Twitter and Meta.