After Amazon and Google, Zoom will also lay off employees.
On February 2nd, it was reported that video conferencing company Zoom (Nasdaq: ZM) confirmed on Thursday that it will lay off about 150 employees, becoming the latest technology company to announce layoffs. A person familiar with the situation said that the layoffs will be carried out department by department, and the number of layoffs will be less than 2% of the total number of employees.
A spokesperson for Zoom stated that the company regularly evaluates its team to "ensure alignment with the company's strategy". "As part of this effort, we are re adjusting positions to increase capabilities and continuing to recruit in key areas in the future."
It is reported that Zoom's layoffs are not entirely company wide, and the company will continue to recruit employees in the artificial intelligence, sales, product, and operations departments in 2024. Zoom also announced a year ago that it would lay off approximately 1300 employees, accounting for about 15% of the total workforce.
According to official website information, Zoom Company was founded by Chinese American Eric S. Yuan in 2011 and is headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. Zoom was listed on NASDAQ in April 2019. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2020, online learning and office led to a surge in ZOOM business. The annual revenue in fiscal year 2021 increased by 326% year on year.
Thanks to the increase in high contribution customers and the hot sales of AI related products, Zoom's latest financial report exceeded Wall Street analysts' expectations. In November 2023, Zoom released its financial report for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 (as of October 31, 2023). The report shows that Zoom's total revenue in the third quarter was 1.1367 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%; The net profit attributable to the common shareholders of the company was $141.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 192%.
It is worth noting that since 2024, in addition to Zoom, several technology companies in the United States have reported a new round of layoffs, including Google, Amazon, chat software Discord, game engine developer Unity Software, and others.
According to media reports citing data from layoff. fyi, a website that tracks layoffs in technology companies, as of Thursday, more than 100 technology companies had laid off about 30000 employees at the beginning of this year. January was the month with the most layoffs in the US technology industry since March last year.
The Global Times reported in January that the International Labour Organization predicts that global unemployment rates will rise this year. However, some experts have analyzed that layoffs are a necessity for corporate transformation. With the completion of transformation and economic recovery, the labor market will receive many positive signals.