Alphabet, the parent entity of Google, declared on Wednesday a reduction in its global recruiting staff, signaling a continued trend of slowing down its hiring activities.
The move to trim a few hundred roles from the recruiting team is a targeted action, and not a widespread retrenchment, ensuring that a substantial portion of the team remains in place for pivotal recruitments, as indicated by the company.
Standing out among the “Big Tech” behemoths, the California-headquartered Google becomes the initial entity this quarter to announce such reductions. This comes in the wake of its peers like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon making considerable cutbacks earlier this year. The economic downturn brought a halt to the expansive hiring activities these companies undertook during the pandemic.
Earlier this year, Alphabet made notable reductions, letting go of around 12,000 positions, which constituted nearly 6% of its global employee base. This included departments such as recruitment and engineering. This announcement came close on the heels of Microsoft’s declaration of a 10,000 personnel cut and Amazon’s revelation of trimming 18,000 jobs.
A study by the employment agency, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, highlighted that job reductions in the US had amplified over three times from July to August, and had almost quadrupled when compared year-on-year.
In line with these trends, Reuters’ poll of economists had predicted that there would be a surge of approximately 8% in the new applications for state unemployment benefits by the week ending on Sept. 9. This is in contrast to a dip by 13,000 claims, totaling 216,000, in the preceding week.
