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Tag: media layoffs

  • Washington Post Announces Plans To Cut 240 Jobs Through Buyouts

    Washington Post Announces Plans To Cut 240 Jobs Through Buyouts

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    The Washington Post announced on Tuesday that it will be cutting 240 jobs by offering voluntary buyouts to its staff.

    In an email sent to employees on Tuesday, interim CEO Patty Stonesifer explained that the Post had been “overly optimistic” about its subscription, traffic and advertising projections over the past two years, the news outlet said.

    “The urgent need to invest in our top growth priorities brought us to the difficult conclusion that we need to adjust our cost structure now,” Stonesifer said in the email, according to the Post.

    The company decided to opt for voluntary buyouts, which will be offered for specific jobs and departments, as a way to avoid potential layoffs. The email did not specify which positions and departments would be offered buyouts, NPR reported. More details about the buyout will reportedly be provided during a staff meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m.

    “To be clear, we designed this program to reduce our workforce by approximately 240 employees in the hopes of averting more difficult actions such as layoffs – a situation we are united in trying to avoid,” Stonesifer wrote.

    The Post currently has a total of 2,500 employees, and nearly 1,000 of them work in the newsroom, The New York Times reported, so the buyouts will affect about 10% of the company’s workforce. In January, the Post laid off 20 staffers and eliminated its Sunday magazine because of declining advertising revenue and readership.

    The media industry has faced a record number of layoffs this year, according to Axios, with at least 17,436 job cuts announced by June. News outlets such as Vox Media, NPR and the Los Angeles Times announced plans to significantly reduce their workforces in 2023, while BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company, shut down its entire news division this year.

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  • Tech layoffs have soared to the highest level in more than two decades

    Tech layoffs have soared to the highest level in more than two decades

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    Layoffs have quadrupled since last year, with media and tech suffering the worst blows. Media has had a record number of year-to-date cuts while tech job losses were the highest since 2001, according to a new report from recruiting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.   

    Every industry increased layoffs this year, except for education, government, industrial manufacturing, and utilities. Tech led the May surge with over 22,000 layoffs for the month, up 2,939% from the same period last year. The total number of layoffs in May was up 20% from April. 

    So far this year, tech has cut 136,831 jobs, compared to 168,395 for all of 2001, amid the tech industry’s collapse.

    Companies overall have eliminated 417,500 jobs since January, the highest five-month total since 2020. Excluding 2020, the start of the pandemic, the year thus far has had the most layoffs since 2009 amid the financial crisis. 

    Still, the national unemployment rate is at just 3.4%, the lowest it’s been since 1969. 

    The media industry’s record of 17,436 year-to-date cuts just surpasses the previous record set in May 2020. Within media, the news industry has seen a particularly difficult year. Nearly 2,000 people have lost their jobs in news this year, eclipsing the tally for all of 2022.

    Plans by companies to hire over the remainder of the year are down from last year as well. The labor market seems to be slowing due to inflation, high interest rates and fears of recession, as companies announced plans to hire just over 100,000 workers this year, down 83% from what they said in May 2022. This is the lowest level of anticipated hiring in nearly three years, during the pandemic. 

    “Job openings are flattening. Companies appear to be putting the brakes on hiring in anticipation of a slowdown,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in the report.

    The banking and retail industries also took a hit, with banks announcing nearly 37,000 job cuts through May, quadruple the figure at the same time last year. Retail endured the second highest industry cuts during May, eliminating over 9,000 jobs last month.

    Layoffs were concentrated in certain locations. California, home of Silicon Valley, was hit the hardest, with job cuts up tenfold from last year to a staggering 151,300 as of last month. New York followed, with a third as many layoffs as California.

    Consumer confidence is at a six-month low as well. In response to the May debt ceiling standoff, outlooks for both business and labor declined, remaining solidly below pre-pandemic levels. 

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    Rachel Shin

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