PayPal To Axe 7 Percent Of Workforce

Tech industry suffers another job loss blow, as PayPal becomes the latest firm to announce a significant tranche of redundancies.

In an announcement entitled an “Update on Our Transformation”, PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman confirmed thousands of job losses at the US fintech firm.

It comes after PayPal last month confirmed that hackers had accessed nearly 35,000 accounts in early December using valid passwords obtained from breaches of other websites.

PayPal layoffs

While it said no transactions were carried out by the intruders, the hackers were able to access detailed personal data including full names, dates of birth, postal addresses, social security numbers and individual tax identification numbers.

PayPal concluded the incident was a credential-stuffing attack, in which attackers try out credentials obtained elsewhere until they find one that works.

The company said it limited the hackers’ access at the time and reset the passwords of the accounts known to have been breached.

Now this week PayPal’s Dan Schulman admitted the firm is working to address the “challenging macroeconomic environment.”

“While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do,” wrote Schulman.

“Addressing these changes requires us to make hard decisions that will impact some of our colleagues,” wrote Schulman. “Today, I’m writing to share the difficult news that we will be reducing our global workforce by approximately 2,000 full time employees, which is about 7 percent of our total workforce.”

“These reductions will occur over the coming weeks, with some organisations impacted more than others,” he wrote. “We will treat our departing colleagues with the utmost respect and empathy, provide them with generous packages, engage in consultation where required, and support them with their transitions. I want to express my personal appreciation for the meaningful contributions they have made to PayPal.”

News of the redundancies pleased investors, and PayPal stock closed up 2 percent Tuesday.

Meanwhile Germany’s federal trade regulator last month said it would initiate proceedings against PayPal Europe over the possibility the company obstructed competition.

Tech layoffs

The PayPal lay-off announcement is the latest round of job cuts in the tech industry, as Intel this week has also revealed layoffs and salary reductions for both staff and executives.

Last month Google announced plans to lay off more than 12,000 workers; Microsoft announced plans to cut 10,000 employees; and Salesforce announced plans to lay off 7,000 workers.

Facebook parent Meta announced 11,000 job cuts in November as ad spending slowed, and Amazon in January confirmed it will cut 18,000 jobs, or 1.2 percent of its worldwide staff.