PayPal is cutting nine percent of its workforce, CEO Alex Chriss said in a letter to employees on Tuesday. was made public hours later. The decision will affect about 2,500 workers who will learn their fate from today until the end of the week. Bloomberg informed earlier. PayPal’s layoffs come nearly a year after the company fire more than 2,000 employees to cut costs.
Cuts at tech companies despite thousands of job cuts in 2023 continued On the same day as PayPal’s recent layoffs, Jack Dorsey’s Block, which owns Cash App, Foundational, and Square, announced its the second round of cuts killed about a thousand people in two months. Earlier this month, Google was fired Along with CEO Sundar Pichai, over a thousand employees in support and hardware divisions warning to employees preparing for more layoffs during the year. Discord, eBay, Riot Games, TikTok, Microsoft, iRobot, Amazon, Unity, and Duolingo, among others, collectively cut thousands of jobs in January.
PayPal was one of the earliest companies in the online payments industry, but in recent years, competitors like Zelle and deep-pocketed tech companies like Apple have entered the space. Competition in the payment industry is putting pressure on PayPal. Bloomberg noted that four analysts downgraded the company’s stock this month. Chriss noted in the letter that the company “will continue to invest in areas of business that we believe will generate and accelerate growth.”
PayPal’s cuts come despite strong growth for the company through 2023. of the company comes As of September 2023, revenue was $7.42 billion, up more than eight percent from a year ago. It beat earnings expectations and reported “double-digit growth” in transactions on its platform. Information noted Chriss, who took over as the company’s CEO in September 2023, said on PayPal’s last earnings call in November 2023 that its costs were “too high” and were “slowing us down.”
