TechCrunch Releases ‘Layoff Tracker’
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008TechCrunch has started a ‘layoff tracker’ to track employee layoffs in the tech sector.
As at October 24, 2008, 19,683 tech layoffs have been announced since mid-September, not counting the 24,600 people at Hewlett-Packard who will be retrenched as a result of its merger with EDS.
Five large companies make up more than 90 percent of the layoffs: Xerox (3,000), Dell (8,900), Yahoo (1,500), eBay (1,500), and Qimonda (3,000). The remaining 33 companies on the Layoff Tracker are generally startups, accounting for 1,683 layoffs. Removing three large companies (Sony Ericsson, Nvidia, and TicketMaster) from the list, and TechCrunch estimates the number of layoffs at tech startups to be 573.
Looking down the list, some of these layoffs constitute a substantial part of the relevant companies’ workforces. For example, the 20 people to leave Imeem constitute a quarter of its workforce.
Sources: Erick Schonfeld, “19,683 Tech Layoffs And Counting”, TechCrunch, October 24, 2008, TechCrunch Layoff Tracker
