The tide of layoffs in the US technology company has intensified: from "resignation fever" to "big layoffs", the turning point of the labor market is approaching?

21st Century Business Herald Reporter Li Yinong Shanghai report

Data (Layoffs.fyi), which tracked the layoffs of American companies since the new crown epidemic, showed that nearly to June alone, nearly 30,000 employees of technology companies were fired.

A few months ago, the US labor market was still staged the "The Great Resignation" caused by "employment waste". A large number of jobs are unprecedented with labor, making employees from all walks of life choose to leave and change jobs in exchange for better salary and treatment. At present, although the situation of "labor shortage" in most industries has not yet changed significantly, the supply and demand situation of technology companies seems to have changed a major change in the labor and demand situation of technology companies.

Ma Wei, an assistant researcher at the American Institute of Social Sciences, pointed out in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald that the existence of layoffs and "labor shortage" is mainly due to inconsistent industry cycles, coupled with the changes in valuation brought by financial markets caused Essence On the whole, the US labor market is still strong, and the layoffs of technology companies cannot temporarily represent the shrinking of the labor market.

Fan Lei, the chief macro analyst of Guolian Securities, said in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald that the layoffs of technology companies on the one hand are related to the expectations of the entire industry in the future and the overall macroeconomic expectations. Affected by the adjustment of its own business structure. In addition, the decline in the stock market has also brought a certain negative impact on the valuation and financing of technology companies.

The "layoffs" of technology companies continue

Since May, a number of large American technology companies have released planning for layoffs and frozen recruitment.

Netflix recently announced that it will lay off about 300 people again. It is reported that the number of employees this time is about 4%of the total number of employees, which is the company's second significant layoff in recent weeks. Due to Nafei's April performance report shows that its global users decreased by nearly 200,000 in the first quarter of 2022, and for the first time in more than ten years, the number of subscribers declined. The company had previously reduced nearly 150 jobs in mid -May. It is worth noting that since the beginning of this year, Naifei's stock price has fallen sharply by more than 70%.

And Nai Fei is only a member of many major layoffs and reduction of recruitment. The recent violent fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market make the cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase under the impact and plan to lay off about 1,100 more than 1,100 employees. This is very different from its active recruitment in recent years. The company's CEO Brian Armstrong warned that "after more than ten years of prosperity and expansion, the economy seems to be in a recession." He also said that he would decrease a significant reduction in the number of employees by 18%.

In addition, digital payment companies Paypal, Facebook's parent company Meta and Twitter and other industry "giants" have also layoffs or slow down and frozen recruitment to varying degrees. Tesla CEO Mask even previously said that he hopes to suspend global recruitment and reduce his job positions, emphasizing that he has a "super bad feeling" for the economy; Tesla must pay attention to its cost and cash flow.

About three months ago, the overall employment situation of technology companies was completely different. A Google employee working in Silicon Valley told the 21st Century Business Herald that the performance and stock performance of most technology companies were good at the end of last year to the beginning of this year. With the opening of the epidemic, major companies have passed various policies through various policies. Competitive talents have caused a sharp rise in wages and digging people everywhere.

"The previous employment market was very good. Many employees would choose to change jobs. In addition, if the company does not increase the salary, it may lose more employees. After the employees are lost, the cost of recruiting people is greater." The interviewee pointed out that under normal circumstances, salary will rise by about 5%, but at the beginning of this year, basically everyone's salary rose by about 8%to 10%.

The interviewee also told reporters that the biggest experience in the recent experience is the change of employee mentality. "From now on, most employees of technology companies have basically dispelled the idea of ​​changing jobs. Especially in small and medium -sized technology companies, it is very good to keep the rice bowl." Basically stopped recruitment, and there will be no interview opportunities for resumes. Even if there is, the salary will be very low. "

The labor market "cools down" is still too early

From "resignation fever" to "big layoffs", the transformation of technology companies seems to have exacerbated people's concerns about the slowdown in the labor market and the gradual increase in unemployment rates. However, according to recent economic data, the overall labor market in the United States is still strong, and there have been no significant signs of cooling.

The data previously released by the US Department of Labor showed that the non -agricultural employment population in the United States increased by 390,000, higher than the expected 325,000, and the previous value was slightly fixed to 436,000; 0.1 percentage points. Economists generally point out that non -agricultural reports continue to show signs of eating the labor market.

For the phenomenon of "polarization" in the overall labor market and technology companies, Ma Wei explained that during the epidemic, online activities were limited, and the overall situation of the corresponding technology companies, especially the technology companies that provided online services, instead benefited from There is even a certain degree of expansion, and the overall valuation of the enterprise has increased rapidly. But with the improvement of the epidemic, more economic activities have shifted offline, especially the service industry. The employment of the service industry is mainly low -income groups, and it is also the most affected group in the United States. Therefore, the problem of "employment waste" of the service industry departments appears. The performance expansion of technology companies has begun to shrink. In addition, the entire stock market decline brought about by the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, technology companies themselves belong to a large valuation fluctuation, and the stock price is the first. The influence of multiple factors has led technology companies to "depart" the overall trend of the labor market and appear "layoffs." However, as the Fed started to raise interest rates sharply, does technology company's "layoffs" indicate that with the possibility of economic decline, the labor market is about to change?

In this regard, Fan Lei pointed out that, as a whole, the current layoffs of American technology companies still have a huge gap compared with the US non -agricultural employment data, which is not enough to reflect or affect the entire employment situation and employment market in the United States. situation.

Fan Lei added that inflation and Fed's tightening policy exceeded expectations, which made the risk of economic recession indeed increased. If the economy is going to decline, it will undoubtedly lead to the development of the United States' output gap towards negative. If the United States has a negative growth for two consecutive quarters, from the perspective of Australia's affirmation law (referring to a fairly stable relationship between the changes in GDP and the change of employment rate), the employment market will inevitably deteriorate to a certain extent. But the probability of judging the economic recession needs further observation.

Ma Wei also emphasized that the labor market in the United States is still quite strong, and the layoffs of technology companies can not yet represent the shrinking of the labor market. However, the risk of economic recession in the United States is indeed rising, which is mainly caused by the increase in interest rates and high inflation.

Ma Wei believes that if the United States wants to achieve a commitment to control inflation, the interest rate will inevitably rise to a much higher level than it is now. Although (influence) has not been reflected in the employment market, it may be just a matter of time with the continuity of interest rate hikes. If the operation is improper, it is expected that in the second half of next year, the US economy is likely to fall into decline.

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