A wave of layoffs is sweeping the US. Here are the major companies that have announced cuts so far, from Gap to Peloton.
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- A wave of layoffs has swept across American business in 2022.
- The cuts stem from slower business growth, paired with rising labor costs.
- The layoffs span across industries, from mortgage lending to digital-payment processing.
Layoffs are sweeping across American businesses in 2022.
Peloton has laid off thousands of employees this year. Real estate firm Re/Max slashed 17% of its workforce. Even traditionally layoff-resistant companies like Netflix have made cuts, and now companies that saw a pandemic-era boom, like Shopify, are cutting hundreds of jobs.
The reason, broadly, is twofold: business growth is slowing, while labor costs are increasing. The combination is causing American companies across a variety of industries to slash headcount.
Here are some of the most notable examples so far:
Reuters/Eduardo Munoz
Gap will cut 5% of its corporate workforce, or about 500 employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"We've let our operating costs increase at a faster rate than our sales, and in turn our profitability," Gap's interim CEO, Bob Martin, wrote in a memo to employees obtained by The Journal.
The layoffs will reportedly impact employees in a wide range of departments and will mainly take place at Gap's offices in San Francisco, New York, and Asia.
Richard Drew/AP
Snap planned to lay off about 20% of its employees beginning in late August, The Verge reported.
The cuts to Snap's 6,400-person workforce will be concentrated in divisions like Zenly, a social mapping app Snap acquired in 2017, as well as a team working on ways for developers to build apps inside Snapchat. Snap's hardware division will also see cuts, weeks after the company announced it was canceling its Pixy drone camera, The Verge reports.
A spokesperson for Snap declined to comment.
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Furniture and home goods company, Wayfair, said it would layoff about 870 employees — 5% of its global workforce — the Wall Street Journal reported. The layoffs represent about 10% of Wayfair's corporate team, the company said, and will cost between $30 million and $40 million for severance and benefits for laid-off employees.
The layoffs are part of Wayfair's efforts to manage expenses and investments, it said. The company said it's also making cuts to third-party labor costs.
After the company announced the layoffs, Wayfair shares fell almost 10% in premarket trading, the WSJ reported.
AP/David Martin
During the pandemic, so-called "meme stocks" from GameStop and AMC exploded. Much of that explosion in stock value was driven by accessible trading platforms like Robinhood.
And while new users piled in during the pandemic, Robinhood hired rapidly. Between 2020 and 2021, Robinhood staff grew dramatically: from 700 people to around 3,800, according to CEO Vlad Tenev. But that growth was apparently too much and too fast, and Robinhood was forced to slash headcount by 9% — more than 300 people altogether — in April.
Then, in August, the company announced it would cut another 800 jobs, or about 23% of its staff.
In the message to employees, CEO Vlad Tenev said that the earlier round of layoffs "did not go far enough" to bring down costs amid record inflation and the crypto market crash, which has reduced trading activity on the platform, he said.
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In February, Peloton fired over 2,800 people amid an ongoing downturn in the company's business.
It was the first of three rounds of layoffs in 2022, with a second round hitting Taiwan-based employees in July and a third wave of employees getting cut in August. In total, more than 4,150 jobs have been axed this year.
Peloton was once a pandemic darling, but the fading popularity of at-home fitness and a mishandling of its logistics operation have put a strain on the business. Peloton replaced cofounder John Foley as CEO in February, and current chief exec Barry McCarthy appears to be taking several measures to revive the business.
Reuters/Lucas Jackson
Shopify laid off roughly 1,000 employees, equivalent to 10% of its workforce worldwide.
In a memo to employees, CEO Tobi Lutke said that the company — which makes the tech that powers businesses' online stores — had bet big on the pandemic-era e-commerce boom.
"It's now clear that bet didn't pay off. Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong," Lutke wrote in the letter, which was posted on the company's website.
Paul Sakuma/AP
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven cut 880 corporate jobs in Ohio and Texas in 2022 in the wake of the company's 2020 purchase of rival Speedway.
A 7-Eleven spokesperson told Insider that the company has been assessing its new corporate structure and undergoing an "integration process" that led to the cuts, which took place at its support centers and field-support operations in Irving, Texas, and Enon, Ohio.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Video-hosting platform Vimeo cut 6% of its staff in July.
"We are making this decision in order to ensure we come out of this economic downturn a stronger company," Vimeo CEO Anijali Sud wrote in a blog post. "Our people are what makes Vimeo great, and losing any of them is a personal failure that I feel deeply. But after assessing the challenging market conditions and uncertainty ahead, I believe this is the responsible action to take."
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Tesla laid off 229 people in late June, according to WARN filings.
The layoffs primarily impacted employees in its Autopilot division. Tesla also closed an entire office in San Mateo, California, and moved some of the office's workers to another location, Bloomberg reported.
The cuts came after CEO Elon Musk said in early June that he wanted to cut jobs and that he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy.
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Electric car-maker Rivian confirmed in July that it would cut around 800 employees, or about 6% of its 14,000-person workforce, as it worked to cut costs.
The layoffs came less than a year after Rivian went public in the largest IPO of 2021.
Hannah Yoon
Delivery startup Gopuff laid off 10% of its staff, Insider reported in July.
"As a business, during these uncertain times, we owe it to our investors and customers to accelerate our timeline to profitability. As such, we have decided to confront the current moment by making difficult decisions about our core business," cofounders Rafael Ilishayev and Yakir Gola wrote in an email to employees.
The latest round of layoffs come after Gopuff cut 3% of its workforce, or more than 400 workers, in March.
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Real estate firm Re/Max will lay off 17% of its workforce by the end of the year, the company announced.
The cuts will primarily affect employees in the technology division, the result of a "shift in strategy" as it partners with a third-party technology vendor, Re/Max said.
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Microsoft announced in July that it was cutting a "small number" of employees across several groups, including consulting and customer and partner solutions, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Amr Alfiky/Reuters
In June, JPMorgan confirmed that it would lay off over 1,000 employees in its home-lending department. The cuts came amid slowing demand for mortgages and refinances.
"Our staffing decision this week was a result of cyclical changes in the mortgage market," a JPMorgan spokesperson said in a statement to Insider at the time. "We were able to proactively move many impacted employees to new roles within the firm and are working to help the remaining affected employees find new employment within Chase and externally."
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Real estate brokerage Compass cut about 10% of its workforce, or 450 employees, the company announced in a regulatory filing.
The cuts were part of a series of new cost-cutting measures that include pausing expansion, consolidating offices, and halting mergers and acquisitions, Bloomberg reported.
Redfin
Real estate brokerage Redfin conducted layoffs in June, a sign that the hot pandemic-era housing market had begung cooling off due to rising interest rates.
CEO Glenn Kelman wrote in a blog post that about 6% of the company's total workforce would be cut, which equates to 470 employees, according to a regulatory filing.
"I said we wouldn't lay people off unless we had to. We have to," Kelman wrote. "Mortgage rates increased faster than at any point in history. We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales, and Redfin still plans to thrive."
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Crypto exchange platform Coinbase announced it would reduce its staff by 18% "to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn."
That same day, over 1,000 employees were notified they'd been laid off when they were unable to log into their work email accounts — the company said in a regulatory filing that its workforce will be reduced to about 5,000 employees by the end of the second quarter of 2022.
The layoffs come amid a crypto crash that has resulted in traders losing roughly $2 trillion since November, NBC News reported.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a blog post that the layoffs are the result of the company growing too quickly, changing economic conditions, and the need to keep costs low during a downturn.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
In May, Carvana cut 12% of its staff, or about 2,500 employees, the online car dealer announced in a regulatory filing.
In an email to employees, CEO Ernest Garcia III said that the company has overestimated growth amid a challenging time in the auto industry.
By cutting staff, Carvana aims to find "a better balance between its sales volumes and staffing levels," the company said in the SEC filing.
Carvana was founded by Garcia in 2012 as a subsidiary of his father's company, DriveTime Automotive. Carvana's service allows customers buy cars online, which are delivered to customers' doors or picked up at a Carvana vending machine.
Both father and son saw their fortunes skyrocket during the pandemic as demand for used cars hit new highs. Carvana said in its SEC filing that executives would forego their salaries for the rest of 2022 to help cover employee severance pay.
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Ghost-kitchens company Reef Technology laid off 5% of its global workforce in May.
The SoftBank-backed startup cut about 750 employees as it worked toward profitability amid a challenging economic environment, CEO Ari Ojalvo wrote in a memo to staff obtained by Insider.
The layoffs come months after Reef said it would pause operations on some of its "underperforming" locations. Current and former employees told Insider that Reef had closed one-third of its kitchens and focused on its partnerships with major chains like Wendy's and Buffalo Wild Wings.
Better.com
Starting in late 2021 and continuing through the first several months of 2022, mortgage startup Better.com laid off approximately 4,000 people.
The first wave started right before the holiday season in 2021, when CEO Vishal Garg laid off "hundreds" of people.
Garg told employees during a Zoom call that the company, "lost $100 million last quarter," which he said, "was my mistake." He then said the layoffs shouldn't have happened right before the holiday, but, "three months ago."
Better followed up with another 3,000 layoffs in March, and began accepting voluntary layoffs in some departments.
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In April, the weight-loss app maker Noom laid off hundreds of coaches, Insider reported — part of a bigger-picture pivot for the company toward more video-based coaching.
The company, through its app of the same name, pairs dieting with personal coaches to achieve weight loss for users. Interactions with those coaches were often through text, which users critiqued as "canned advice." Some coaches told Insider they were responsible for giving advice to hundreds of users at any given time.
Going forward, Noom said it would focus on offering users scheduled video calls with coaches.
Thrasio
Thrasio, the company known for creating the Amazon aggregator market, is laid off an unknown number of people in May. Additionally, the company's CEO and founder, Carlos Cashman, stepped down from leadership.
In a memo sent to employees, Thrasio leadership said the layoffs were due to the company's "hypergrowth" in acquiring companies.
"At times we have been acquiring a new company almost every week," the memo said, "and running hard to build the infrastructure to support this growth."
Two sources told Insider at the time that the layoffs would impact up to 20% of Thrasio's staff.
REUTERS/ Shannon Stapleton
As mortgage revenues fell at Wells Fargo in the first quarter of 2022, the company began laying off employees in mortgage-related positions, Insider reported in late April.
Loan processors and underwriters, among other positions, were reportedly affected by the layoffs. Wells Fargo representatives declined to say how many people were impacted by the cuts, but did confirm the layoffs in an emailed statement.
"We are carrying out displacements in a transparent and thoughtful manner and providing assistance, such as severance and career counseling. Additionally, we are committed to retaining as many employees as possible and will do everything we can to help them identify other opportunities within Wells Fargo," a Wells Fargo spokesperson said in a statement provided to Insider at the time.
Blair Gable/Reuters
One of the world's largest publicly traded cannabis companies, Canopy Growth, slashed 250 jobs in Canada earlier this year as it faces increasing competition in the burgeoning cannabis market.
Layoffs were among several cost-cutting measures that Canopy Growth is taking "to ensure the size and scale of our operations reflect current market realities and will support the long-term sustainability of our company," Canopy Growth CEO David Klein said in a statement at the time.
Food52
After raising $80 million from investing firm The Chernin Group last December, the content-creation team at food publication and retailer Food52 was suddenly laid off in early April.
About 20 of the company's 200 employees were let go in the layoffs, which came as a major surprise to those affected.
"Everyone on the team and my immediate boss were gut-punched," one of these employees told Insider. "We all had gotten raises and bonuses just a month prior."
Two of the employees who were laid off said Food52 executives told them the company was "pivoting to commerce," and away from the type of content that was created by the affected employees: recipes and other instructional cooking content.
Cameo
Video app Cameo laid off 87 people in early May.
"Today has been a brutal day at the office," CEO Steven Galanis wrote on Twitter. "I made the painful decision to let go of 87 beloved members of the Cameo Fameo."
Galanis described the layoffs as a "course correction" in a statement to Variety. The cuts followed a staffing boom during the pandemic, when the company grew from around 100 employees before 2020 to about 400 in 2022.
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In April, PayPal quietly laid off 83 people, according to a regulatory filing.
The company employed more than 30,000 people worldwide, over a third of whom are based in the US. The cuts appear to be tied to the company downsizing its presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to TechCrunch.
Gorillas
German grocery-delivery company Gorillas announced layoffs of "nearly 300" people around the world in May.
The layoffs, the company said, were part of a larger "shift to long-term profitability," which meant trimming staff as Gorillas focuses on its five "core" markets: Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US.
Impacted employees, who were mostly corporate staff, were shocked by the sudden layoffs.
"It's not a secret that the company hasn't been doing well, but I didn't expect to wake up and lose my job," a Berlin-based employee who was laid off by Gorillas told Insider. "My managers weren't even aware or consulted. It's not the laying off that hurts, it's the way it's been done."
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Netflix laid off around 150 people in mid-May, its second round of layoffs in 2022.
The latest layoffs, which impacted "mostly US-based" staff, were due to "slowing revenue growth," according to a statement from a Netflix spokesperson. "These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough."
Earlier this year, Netflix revealed that it had lost around 200,000 subscribers to its video-streaming service in Q1 — its first subscriber loss in over a decade. And executives warned at the time that further subscriber losses were predicted for the future. They blamed "revenue growth headwinds" in a report to shareholders and said that heavy Netflix use during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic had "obscured the picture until recently."
These are not the first layoffs to hit the streaming incumbent this year.
After assertively recruiting high-profile writers and editors for its new fan site, Tudum, last year, Netflix laid off nearly a dozen contracted staffers from the editorial project in late April, in addition to about 25 employees in its marketing department.
Ben Gilbert contributed to an earlier version of this article.
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