PayPal cuts 2,000 jobs in latest tech layoffs

WASHINGTON — PayPal is cutting about 2,000 jobs, or 7% of its workforce, as it becomes the latest tech giant to cut costs.

The online payments company said it had to make the decision as it faced a “challenging macroeconomic environment.”

PayPal’s announcement follows tens of thousands of layoffs by the tech giant in the last month alone.

This year, Google’s parent companies, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, announced significant job cuts.

“We must continue to change as the world, our customers and the competitive landscape evolve,” PayPal CEO Dan Shulman said in a statement.

Also on Tuesday, Snap, the parent company of social media platform Snapchat, warned that its revenue could fall by up to 10% in the three months to the end of March.

“We expect the business environment to remain challenging as we expect the headwinds we have faced over the past year to persist through the first quarter,” the company said to investors.

After the announcement, Snap’s stock fell about 15% in long-term trading in New York.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to cut more than 18,000 jobs due to an “uncertain economy” and rapid hiring during the pandemic.

Also this month, Alphabet announced it will cut 12,000 jobs, and Microsoft announced that up to 10,000 employees will lose their jobs.

Last week, Swedish music streaming giant Spotify announced it would cut 6% of its roughly 10,000 employees, citing a need to improve efficiency.

In another sign of a slowdown in the tech industry, US computer chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) reported Tuesday that its net profit fell 98% in the last three months of 2022.

The company also said it expects revenue to fall by up to 10% this quarter.

However, the numbers were better than many investors expected and AMD’s share price rose after the announcement.

In Asia on Wednesday, SK Hynix, the world’s second largest memory chip maker, posted its biggest ever quarterly loss.

South Korean companies reported a worse-than-expected 1.7 trillion won ($1.4bn; £1.1bn) loss in the last three months of 2022 as sales fell by 38%.

Pointing to falling computer chip prices, the company has joined rival tech giants in warning it expects an industry-wide recession to worsen in the coming months before rebounding later this year.

That happened after rival Samsung Electronics reported its lowest quarterly profit in eight years on Tuesday. — BBC