Apple is laying off more than 600 workers in California, marking the first major wave of job losses after the pandemic amid a broader wave of consolidation in the tech industry.
The iPhone maker notified 614 employees across multiple offices on March 28 that they were losing their jobs. According to reports to regional authorities, the layoffs took effect on May 27.
The employees were fired from eight offices in Santa Clara, according to the filings under the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as Warn. But it is not clear in which departments or projects the employees were involved.
In February, Apple canceled its multibillion-dollar plans to build an electric car. Executives reportedly told employees at the time that the company was focusing its resources on artificial intelligence programs, and that layoffs were expected for some of the workforce.
Apple’s electric vehicle program originally aimed to build a fully self-driving car, but continually changed its plans and failed to produce a viable product, amid employee turnover and missed deadlines. The company’s decision to end the program completely nevertheless surprised employees. according to Bloomberg.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
The Cupertino, California-based company has been a notable exception as other tech companies have reduced their workforces over the past two years. There was a big increase in hiring during the Covid-19 pandemic, as people spent more time and money online, and big tech companies are still bigger than before the pandemic. However, as growth slows, companies are focusing on cutting costs.
In a recent filing with regulators, Apple said it had about 161,000 full-time equivalent employees.
Amazon announced another round of layoffs earlier this week, this time at its cloud computing company AWS. In recent months, video game maker Electronic Arts said it was cutting about 5% of its workforce, Sony said it was cutting about 900 jobs in its PlayStation division, Cisco Systems unveiled plans to lay off more than 4,000 employees and social media company Snap, which owns Snapchat , announced it will cut 10% of its global workforce.