eBay is laying off 1,000 employees, about 9% of its staff

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

New York (CNN) — eBay is cutting 1,000 roles, about 9% of its full-time employees, the company’s CEO announced online Tuesday.

The company also plans to scale back its contracts with its “alternate workforce” in the coming months.

CEO Jamie Iannone cited the “challenging macroeconomic environment” as an external pressure but added that there are factors the company can control.

“While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business. To address this, we’re implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world,” the note said.

Iannone requested US employees work from home on January 24th “to provide space and privacy for these conversations.” He said employees would be notified if they were laid off by their leader over Zoom.

“We’re committed to treating everyone with respect and empathy through this transition and providing impacted employees with support and resources,” Iannone said.

The eBay action is the latest round of layoffs to hit the tech industry in the first month of 2024, after an already difficult 2023 for the sector. This month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned employees to expect additional layoffs in the months to come as the tech giant reorients itself toward artificial intelligence “and beyond.” Duolingo laid off around 10% of its contract workers as it moves to rely more heavily on artificial intelligence. Amazon also cut hundreds of jobs, including at streaming platform Twitch.

Almost 11,000 tech employees have been laid off at 63 companies so far in 2024, according to data from layoffs.fyi.

CNN’s Brian Fung, Jennifer Korn, Clare Duffy and Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

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