A wave of 81,000 layoffs from multinational companies has hit hard. 5 of the 15 companies leading the mass layoffs worldwide have operations in Costa Rica. The layoffs are due to economic uncertainty, hardening of monetary policies, and a need to reduce operating costs.
Those in Costa Rica are Amazon, Microsoft, 3M, Philips, and IBM. These five companies have just cut 40,400 jobs worldwide.
Amazon is one of the main employers in the country and in the world. Since August 2022, 17,000 Costa Ricans have worked for Amazon.
The technological sector has begun dismissing workers in alarming numbers. Google cut 18,000 workers. Philips cut 6,000 positions. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, laid off 12,000. Microsoft got rid of 10,000. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had to let 11,000 people go. IBM reduced 3,900 jobs. SAP let 3,000 people go, Spotify 600, and Salesforce 7,000. All of this in recent weeks.
The site Layoffs.fyi reported that since the beginning of last year, 230,000 employees of technology companies have been laid off.
During the height of the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022, many technological companies actually doubled their workforce, as so many people transitioned to purchasing online. Now, facing a possible recession, people are spending more cautiously. In 2022, companies faced inflation, global conflict, and economic slowdown. The US Federal Reserve will likely continue to raise interest rates this year, one of the reasons for the layoffs.
