Hewlett-Packard Co, once the world’s largest maker of personal computers, said it plans to cut 4,000 to 6,000 jobs by the end of fiscal 2025, making it the latest technology giant to shed thousands of employees in response to growing economic uncertainty.
The company’s announcement of the layoffs, which coincided with an 11 percent drop in quarterly sales, comes a month after industry watchers IDC and Gartner warned that demand for computers is falling at the fastest pace in decades.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, CEO Enrique Lores said, “The notion that we don’t think the market will turn around during 2023 is prudent enough.”
HP’s layoffs make it the latest in a string of tech giants cutting jobs in response to a worsening economy marked by high inflation that has weakened demand for goods and slowed advertising spending. Other big companies in the tech world, including Facebook parent Meta, Google parent Alphabet, Intel and Apple, have either slowed hiring or laid off workers after rapidly adding employees during the pandemic.
In the most extreme case, Twitter (Twitter) has drastically reduced its staffing levels, plummeting from 7,500 to less than 3,000 employees in the weeks after Elon Musk took over.
Demand soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people upgraded their home computers for school and work, which allowed PC makers such as HP to make a fortune and expand in a big way, only to be caught off guard by the ensuing recession. The only company that seems to have beaten the trend is Apple, which continues to report record sales, thanks in part to the introduction of highly anticipated new laptops and tablets.
