Twitch, the livestreaming platform owned by Amazon, said on Wednesday that it was laying off hundreds of workers, the latest in a number of companies announcing cuts in their workforce this week. But experts tell Newsweek that the job losses do not signal that mass layoffs are set to hit the U.S. economy in the immediate future.
This week, Amazon, investment firm BlackRock and language-learning business Duolingo instituted cutbacks. Twitch laid off 500 workers in what CEO Dan Clancy said was an effort to make the business more sustainable.
“We still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch,” he said in a post on the company’s website.
A BlackRock spokesperson confirmed to Newsweek that the company was cutting 3 percent of its global workforce, about 600 people.
In a note sent to employees on Wednesday that Amazon shared with Newsweek, Senior Vice President Mike Hopkins said that the company “will be eliminating several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization.”
Duolingo confirmed to Newsweek that at year’s end, the company “off-boarded around 10% of our contractor workforce,” according to a spokesperson.
“We are not able to share specific numbers. In some cases, this was because the contractor’s project concluded, and in some cases, this was because the contractor’s work was no longer needed due to changes in how we generate and share content between our 100+ language courses,” the spokesperson added.
US bankruptcies surged 18% in 2023 compared to the previous year, on the back of higher interest rates, per Reuters.
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Alphabet Inc.’s Google is laying off hundreds of people working on its digital assistant, hardware and engineering teams as part of a continued effort to lower costs and prioritize efforts around artificial intelligence.
The affected employees included those working on the voice-based Google Assistant and at the augmented reality hardware team. The company’s central engineering organization was also hit by cuts, the company said.