PayPal will cut some 2,500 jobs in the upcoming year, according to Bloomberg, marking the latest round of tech industry layoffs so far this year.
Key Takeaways
- The cuts will reduce PayPal’s workforce by about 9%, which includes both eliminating vacant positions and cutting jobs, CEO Alex Chriss told staff Tuesday in a letter obtained by Bloomberg.
- The letter reportedly said the company wanted to “right-size” PayPal, which employed some 29,900 people at the end of 2022, according to the company.
Big number
2,000. That’s how many employees PayPal laid off in January 2023, which cut about 7% of the company’s global workforce. Those cuts were attributed to a “challenging macro-economic environment,” by then-CEO Dan Schulman.
Tangent
The layoffs add to a string of cuts tech companies have made in 2024. Earlier this week, iRobot announced it was cutting some 350 jobs. Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees last week, a year after the company cut 10,000 from its workforce. Online retailer eBay cut about 1,000 people from its workforce last week.
Key background
Chriss, who was appointed CEO in September, was hired to replace Schulman and primed to readjust the company’s course as it managed industry-wide and internal challenges. Those challenges included instability at the top of the company after it lost a number of executives in recent years. The company’s stock has also taken a steep fall—at one point in 2021, PayPal was trading at more than $300 a share—recently it has hovered around $60 to $65 a share. PayPal, which owns Venmo, also has had to compete in a crowded market with Apple Pay and Zelle as competitors. Last year, a number of large American banks announced plans to create a new digital wallet called Paze which would allow customers to make purchases online with the goal of giving banks back the control over purchases made with services like PayPal and Apple Pay. Paze is expected to formally launch in quarter one of 2024.
