How Apple Has So Far Avoided Mass Job Cuts Despite The Tech Layoff Wave (Feb 2024)

Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Meta, HP and Google are some of the big names among the long-expanding list of companies that have announced mass layoffs.

No Mass Layoffs At Apple Yet

One tech giant that has been an exception to date is Apple. Apple employees have so far been able to avoid mass layoffs at the world's first company to hit the $3 trillion market value.

It's not that the economic slowdown and rising recession fearless haven't impacted Apple. While Apple shares are currently up 16% this year till date, the tech giant did see its shares bleed last year, just like other tech giants. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is expected next month to report its first quarterly sales decline in over three years.

So how has Apple not announced mass layoffs till now? Well, there are three key reasons that can be attributed to Apple being an exception amid the mass layoffs at tech giants.

First, Apple not aggressively hiring during the pandemic. 

The second reason is that Apple doesn't offer perks such as free lunches to its staff at the campus.

And third, its CEO Tim Cook himself took a voluntary pay cut of 50% for this year 2023, which can possibly help in trimming costs amid uncertain economic headwinds.

Tim Cook's Voluntary Pay Cut

Apple will be cutting its CEO Tim Cook's compensation by 50% to $49 million in 2023, citing investor guidance and a request from Cook himself to adjust his pay.  

Tim Cook yielded to resistance over his lush compensation package, as advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services expressed to Apple shareholders “significant concerns regarding the design and magnitude,” Reuters reported. Despite the fact that stockholders ended up approving his pay package—64.4% voting in support—the billionaire CEO agreed that it should be scaled back, as per Forbes.

In comparison to Cook, although Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg did take public accountability for their purported missteps that led to their respective layoffs, neither volunteered to slash their compensation to correct their wrongs. Instead, their employees bore the brunt of job losses when they aren't responsible for the executive decisions of the company.

Apple's Judicious Approach When Hiring

Compared to the other big tech companies, Apple scaled its workforce at a relatively slow pace and has generally followed the same hiring rate since 2016, as per the Forbes report.

While there was a hiring surge in Silicon Valley during the pandemic, Apple added less than 7,000 jobs in 2020. In September 2022, it was reported that the company employed 164,000 full-time workers, in both its corporate and retail divisions.

Rampant Hiring By Other Big Techs

Mostly, the tech companies undergoing mass layoffs currently are the ones who in all likelihood hired fervently during their pandemic—and even before.

Alphabet has consecutively expanded its workforce by at least 10% annually since 2013, according to CNBC. The company grew its headcount by over 20% in 2018 and 2019. The growth continued, adding over 16,000 new hires in 2020 and 21,000 employees in 2021, the report mentioned.

Since 2012, Meta has expanded its workforce by thousands each year. In 2020, Zuckerberg increased headcount by 30%—13,000 workers. The following year, the social media platform added another 13,000 employees to its payroll. Those two years marked the biggest growth in the company's history.

Amazon has already initiated its plan to lay off 18,000 employees in the process which is expected to continue in 2023 after being announced in late 2022. 

In 2021, Amazon had reportedly hired an estimated 500,000 employees, according to GeekWire, becoming the second-largest employer in the United States after Walmart. A year later, the company expanded its workforce by 310,000. Prior to its layoff announcement, it was reported that Amazon employed 1.5 million workers, including corporate and warehouse staff.

Overall, it does seem that it has been so far so good for Apple employees, with no mass layoffs announced yet amid the job cut wave weeping over the tech sector. But it remains to be seen whether the Tim Cook-led tech giant is able to sustain this and totally avoid mass layoffs despite rising global recession fears, inflationary concerns and rising interest rates.