PayPal Announces 9% Workforce Reduction with 2,500 Job Cuts

(CTN News) – PayPal plans to slash another 2,500 jobs, or 9% of its global staff, a year after making a similar move.

CEO Alex Chriss informed employees that the decision was made to “right-size” the organisation “through both direct reductions and the elimination of open roles”.

The affected employees will be notified by the end of the week, according to the digital payment giant.

PayPal is seeing increased competition from companies like Apple, Zelle, and Block.

Mr Chriss was hired from software business Intuit last year to help turn around PayPal.

Investors anticipated he would be able to resuscitate the company’s share price, which has dropped by more than 20% in the last year.

In November, PayPal published its first earnings under its new CEO, which exceeded experts’ estimates, giving investors hope that its comeback was started.

Last week, the company introduced new artificial intelligence-powered items and a one-click checkout function.

The latest job losses come after tens of thousands of layoffs by other internet behemoths in recent months.

Last year, the sector shed more than 260,000 jobs, according to the Layoffs.fyi website, which monitors job layoffs in the IT industry.

In the past month, around 100 IT companies, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, and Salesforce, have disclosed a total of 25,000 job cutbacks.

Block, run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, began job cuts this week as part of a plan to reduce its headcount by 1,000 by the end of the year.

Last year, CEOs blamed job losses on a pandemic hiring binge and rising inflation, which led to low consumer demand.

However, some IT professionals are pushing back. Earlier this month, a union representing Google employees said it was “needless” for the internet giant to lose hundreds of jobs when it earns billions of dollars per year.