Tech layoffs: The Great Correction?
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amazon. Meta. Twitter. A lot of tech companies are letting workers go. According to one estimate, nearly 140,000 have been laid off in the industry this year. And while that’s small compared to job losses during the dot-com bust, the vibes are not great.
On the show today, Rucha Vankudre, a senior economist at labor analysis firm Lightcast, walks us through what’s driving the latest layoffs across the tech industry and what it all might mean for the U.S. economy. Is it a sign of things to come? (Fyi: We expect JOLTS numbers and the November jobs report this week.)
In the News Fix, it’s all about the Democrats. We’re taking a closer look at their position on the railroad strike along with plans to shake up future Democratic presidential contests.
Then, we’ll hear about the world’s greatest eggnog recipe, and a listener calls in to share what she got wrong about being laid off.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
-
- “Tech Layoffs Are Here. That Doesn’t Mean the Sky Is Falling.” by Rucha Vankudre in Barron’s
-
- “Congressional Leaders Say They Will Act to Prevent Rail Strike” from The New York Times
-
- Twitter thread from the NYT’s Binyamin Appelbaum
-
- “Democrats prepare to upend presidential primary calendar” from Politico
-
- “World’s Greatest Eggnog” from Garden & Gun magazine
It’s Giving Tuesday. TRIPLE the impact of your donation to Marketplace today: https://support.marketplace.org/smart-sn
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart |
| 0:11.4 | as all of us. |
| 0:12.4 | I'm Karizdol, it's Tuesday, one day, one topic, today those big tech layoffs, because given |
| 0:18.0 | everything happening in tech right now from the layoffs to crypto and FDX and Twitter |
| 0:24.1 | on my goodness, there are some things happening, shall we say? |
| 0:29.5 | Some vibes, if you will, in the tech sector. So there have been more than 137,000 tech layoffs |
| 0:39.7 | in that sector this year that we know about so far, hitting companies big and small, more |
| 0:44.9 | cuts could potentially be coming, lots of companies are definitely having a look at their |
| 0:50.4 | staff lists and making some hard choices. What we want to know right now is what all this |
| 0:55.8 | might mean, not just for Silicon Valley and the other tech hubs in the country, but also |
| 1:01.8 | for the broader US economy. And here to make a smart about that is Ruchavann Kudre. She's |
| 1:08.6 | senior economist with Lightcast, a labor markets analytics firm. Welcome to the program. |
| 1:13.8 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:17.1 | So the first, can you help us understand what's behind all these tech layoffs? Why is all |
| 1:24.5 | this happening right now? |
| 1:26.5 | Yeah, so there's a few different reasons. I think the largest one really has to do with |
| 1:32.4 | what's happening in the economy overall. So as we know, inflation has been very high |
| 1:38.4 | and in an attempt to combat that, the Fed has been pushing up interest rates. And what |
| 1:43.5 | that means is that people are now a lot less likely to be investing in new things and to |
| 1:49.6 | be counting on future growth. So a lot of these companies originally didn't have necessarily |
| 1:55.9 | the strongest business plans, but had promises of future growth, future profits. And that was |
| 2:02.8 | something that when the economy is strong and interest rates are low, people are willing |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.