Facebooks Meta laid off 4,000 more workers on Wednesday, but labor experts say this is not a reflection of the economy
“Given the fact they overstaffed so much” the jobs cuts move Meta closer to Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of laying off 10,000 workers following the collapse of the Metaverse.
“They hired a lot of very expensive people that had rare backgrounds” and now those people and their jobs are in jeopardy says Silicon Valley High Tech expert Rob Enderle “They’re clearly struggling with where they want to be when the grow up and unfortunately the employees are paying the price.”
Gameplay programmers, technical workers and engineers working on virtual reality products dominated this round of job cuts.
But in Washington the unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.5% in March raising questions about the recession “The FED, they’re not acting like we’re in a recession at all” Enderle says with surprise and excitement “The jobs numbers remain so good; typically dropping into a recession you have high unemployment and we don’t have that.”
The first round of Meta layoffs back in November claimed 726 jobs in Seattle. Details behind the latest numbers are yet known.
“Microsoft to a large extent and Chat GPT caught everybody napping” but Enderle says Artificial Intelligence may be flipping the script and changing the business outlook because it’s developing so much faster than anyone expected “The disruption that this technology has caused is global; in impact and significance.”
Here in Washington, state employment officials say the next few months are going to tell us more about the direction of the labor market.