CEO apologizes for using Martin Luther King Jr. quote in layoffs email
Washington PostDec 23, 2022
The Facts
Yahoo announced Thursday it will lay off over 1.6k employees from its advertising technology division, or 20% of its total staff this year. The company already terminated 1k positions on the day of the announcement, with the rest expected to come in the second half of the year.
CEO Jim Lanzone said the decision isn't due to financial troubles but rather to make strategic changes to the company's Yahoo for Business advertising unit, which isn't profitable
The Spin
Narrative A
These mass layoffs are undoubtedly real, but so is the strong economy. This is because most of the cuts are confined to the tech industry, particularly for software engineers, recruiters, and product, marketing, and operations managers. However, this doesn't mean those jobs are obsolete, but that major corporations simply overhired during the pandemic and are now correcting course. Other sectors are open for business right now, and tech workers will soon catch up as their industry is expected to boom in the coming decade.
Narrative B
This isn't just a tech sector problem, as temp workers, particularly in manufacturing, have seen a wave of 110K workers being laid off in the last five months of 2022. Though unemployment seems to be holding steady, the mixture of white and blue-collar job losses, coupled with impending stagflation as the Fed retains its high-interest rates, could amount to a very real, albeit unique, recession.
