Apple Axes 100 Recruiters, Amid Hiring Slowdown – Report

Apple has reportedly laid off a tranche of people, in an apparent effort to slowdown hiring and clamp down on spending.

Blooomberg’s Mark Gurman (a noted Apple leaker), citing people with knowledge of the matter, reported that Apple has laid off many of its contract-based recruiters as part of its push to rein in hiring and spending.

There has been no official confirmation of the move, but it comes amid other tech firms tightening their financial belts, reducing spending, and slowing hiring or laying people off.

Apple layoffs

Last month Mark Gurman had reported that Apple would not backfill roles or add new staff in certain cases, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

He also reported the iPhone giant would also slow hiring and spending for a number of its teams in 2023.

Now according to his latest Bloomberg article, Apple has laid off about 100 contract-based recruiters in the past week.

The recruiters are reportedly responsible for hiring new staff at the company, but they were told that the layoffs reflect changes to Apple’s business needs.

Apple reportedly declined to comment on the layoffs.

The report did state that not all of Apple’s contractors were let go.

Indeed, Apple is reportedly still keeping its full-time recruiters on board, according to Bloomberg.

The terminated contractors will receive benefits and pay for two more weeks.

Hiring slowdown

Apple is not alone in doing this, as other firms are undertaking similar measures.

In May a senior executive at Microsoft warned the management of the Windows and Office divisions to adopt a more conservative approach to hiring new people.

Then last month Microsoft expanded its hiring slowdown, after it began withdrawing job openings in a number of divisions.

Microsoft had already cut less than 1 percent of jobs as part of an annual structural adjustment in early July, which it said was routinely carried out every summer.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai meanwhile in an email to staff last month warned that Alphabet plans to slow down hiring and consolidate investments through 2023

Facebook parent Meta Platforms last month scaled back its target for adding software engineers this year from 10,000 to around 6,000 to 7,000.

Tesla meanwhile is already restructuring its operations and is in the process of axing 10,000 jobs, after Elon Musk announced he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and planned to cut headcount by 10 percent and “pause all hiring worldwide.”

These moves come as the world faces inflationary pressures, rising fuel costs and food prices, caused in part by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and the economic fallout from lockdowns imposed during the global Coronavirus pandemic.

Amazon and Oracle have also reportedly slowed hiring or cut back on some departments in recent months.