On Monday, LinkedIn, a subsidiary of Microsoft, announced its second wave of job cuts for the year, affecting a total of 668 employees in various departments, including engineering, talent, and finance.
These layoffs come as the professional social media network experiences a slowdown in revenue growth. They impact slightly over 3% of LinkedIn’s workforce, which stands at 20,000 employees, contributing to the broader trend of job reductions within the technology sector due to economic uncertainty.
Here is what LinkedIn said in a blog post on Monday:
While we are adapting our organizational structures and streamlining our decision making, we are continuing to invest in strategic priorities for our future and to ensure we continue to deliver value for our members and customers
In the first half of the year, the tech sector witnessed a significant increase in job layoffs, with a total of 141,516 employees losing their jobs, in contrast to the approximately 6,000 job cuts recorded just a year ago, as reported by the employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
LinkedIn generates its revenue primarily through advertising sales and subscriptions, targeting recruitment and sales professionals who utilize the platform to source potential job candidates.
In the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2023, LinkedIn experienced a 5% year-on-year growth in revenue, which marked a decrease compared to the 10% growth achieved in the preceding quarter.
Microsoft has identified a slowdown in hiring and a reduction in advertising expenditure as challenges faced by LinkedIn, despite the continuous expansion of its user base, which now stands at 950 million members.
