Apple eliminating 614 California jobs in move to cut costs

In a recent regulatory filing, Apple said it had about 161,000 fulltime equivalent employees.

Apple is eliminating more than 600 jobs in California, marking the company’s first big wave of post-pandemic job cuts amid a broader wave of tech industry consolidation.

The iPhone maker notified 614 workers in multiple offices on March 28 that they were losing their jobs, with the terminations becoming effective on May 27, according to reports to regional authorities.

The workers were being laid off from eight offices in Santa Clara, according to the filings under the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as WARN. But it’s not clear which departments or projects the employees were involved in.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The Cupertino, Calif., company had been a notable exception as other tech companies reduced their workforces over the past two years. There was a huge surge in hiring during the pandemic, when people spent more time and money online, and big tech companies are still larger than they were before the pandemic. Still, as growth slows, companies are focusing on cutting costs.

In a recent regulatory filing, Apple said it had about 161,000 full-time equivalent employees.

Amazon announced earlier this week a fresh round of job cuts, this time at its cloud computing business AWS. In recent months, video game maker Electronic Arts said it’s cutting about 5% of its workforce, Sony said its axing about 900 jobs in its PlayStation division, Cisco Systems revealed plans to fire more than 4,000 workers, and social media company Snap, owner of Snapchat, announced its eliminating 10% of its global workforce.