Apple May Be Planning To Eliminate Some Corporate Retail Jobs

Apple is the latest big tech company to announce it is laying off staff, though the planned job cuts are more minor than those made by its competitors. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the tech giant is planning to terminate a small number of employees who work for its "development and preservation teams," which are part of the retail department. The teams taking the brunt of the alleged future cuts perform maintenance work in Apple's stores and other properties. They are also responsible for constructing those stores. 

Bloomberg likened the cuts to more of a "streamlining effort" than actual layoffs. The news organization's contacts didn't give a firm number nor a ballpark figure when it comes to the cuts, but suggested the total number of redundancies would be "low." Apple currently employs around 164,000 full-time people according to Statista. Prior to this, Apple's major staff-related cost-saving measures involved a pay cut for CEO Tim Cook. Despite taking the 40% pay cut, Cook's salary is still astronomically high and he probably won't be having money worries any time soon.

Apple isn't the only firm to cut staff numbers in recent months. Many tech companies have had to restructure following the post-pandemic economic dip. Facebook owner Meta was amongst those making the most drastic staff reductions, with 11,000 roles terminated last year and more cuts allegedly planned. CEO Mark Zuckerberg shouldered most of the blame for the job losses, claiming he had grown the company too quickly and presumed the economic boom that started a few years ago would continue.

Google has also made large cuts to its workforce, with 12,000 staff made redundant. A staggering 18,000 Amazon employees found themselves out of work when the company decided to cut costs. Microsoft, Spotify, and HP are also amongst the Silicon Valley firms that have had to tighten their belts and saw layoffs as a way to do that. Twitter was the first firm to make major cuts, but those followed Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform. 

It's widely believed Twitter's board would have had to take actions similar to Musk's initial round of cuts anyway, but even more job losses followed the initial cull. After initially laying off over half of Twitter's workforce, Musk issued an ultimatum that gave employees a choice between the same redundancy package and adopting a new "hardcore" attitude. This led to a second exodus, and there have been more sporadic and temperamental firings since then.