PayPal will cut 7% of its staff

The company-owner of the electronic payment system PayPal plans to lay off 2,000 employees or 7% of its staff. The cuts will take place over the next few weeks, said the president and CEO of PayPal Dan Schulman.

He added that the company will treat the leaving colleagues with great respect and sympathy. PayPal will provide them with support, also the company is ready to help the former employees with further employment. Schulman expressed his personal gratitude to the fired employees for their significant contributions to PayPal.

The payment system joins a list of technology companies that have announced layoffs in recent months. Google announced plans to lay off 12,000 employees, or about 6 percent of its workforce. Before that, the intention to cut 10,000 workers was announced by Microsoft.

Shulman and representatives of other companies explained the mass layoffs by the difficult macroeconomic situation. PayPal has made significant progress in defining its cost structure and focusing resources on its strategic priorities, Shulman said.

Technology companies laid off a total of more employees in January 2023 than in the last two months of 2022, according to TrueUp tracker data. More than 99,900 workers have been hit by layoffs since the beginning of the year, with more than 50,500 last November and about 40,300 in December.