Tech and biotech companies have chopped hundreds more Bay Area jobs, with the latest staffing reductions hitting workers at two green energy companies and a veteran life sciences firm.
The most recent rounds of layoffs raise questions about when the waves of Bay Area tech and biotech job cuts that began in 2022 will finally start to ebb.
ChargePoint, an electric vehicle charging company; EnerVenue, a maker of cutting-edge batteries; and BioMarin Pharmaceutical are among the tech or biotech companies that have revealed plans for job cuts, according to official WARN notices filed with the state Employment Development Department.
Tech companies in 2022, 2023 and 2024 have slashed more than 46,200 jobs in the Bay Area, including the recent cutbacks, according to this news organization’s review of hundreds of WARN letters on file with the EDD.
Here are the details of the latest rounds of layoffs by tech or biotech companies in the Bay Area:
— BioMarin Pharmaceutical, 147 job cuts affecting workers in San Rafael, Novato and Petaluma. The cutbacks are slated for Nov. 1.
— EnerVenue, 65 staffing reductions in Fremont. The anticipated date of the reductions is Nov. 8.
— ChargePoint, 64 layoffs of workers in Campbell. The cutbacks are slated to occur Nov. 4.
— Planet Labs, 1 job cut in San Francisco. The layoff date is Oct. 31.
To be sure, the tech sector has historically been characterized by boom-and-bust cycles.
Despite that volatility, the technology industry has become arguably the most important engine for the Bay Area’s economy and job market in recent decades.
The current spate of tech job cuts that began in 2022, however, has caused that engine to sputter badly as a catalyst for job creation.
Even worse, the tech industry has impeded the region’s job market during a period of transformation for the sector.
Technology companies have shed jobs in certain units while they seek to position themselves for future opportunities such as artificial intelligence and green energy.
These are the 10 tech companies that have slashed the most jobs in the Bay Area in 2022, 2023 and so far in 2024. These years mark a time of elevated staffing reductions by the technology sector in the wake of the coronavirus:
— Facebook app owner Meta Platforms, 5,195 job cuts in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Burlingame, Sunnyvale and Fremont.
— Tesla, 3,652 layoffs in Fremont, Palo Alto and San Mateo.
— Google, 2,507 staffing reductions in Mountain View, Moffett Field, San Bruno, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and San Francisco.
— Cisco Systems, 1,807 job cuts in San Jose, San Francisco and Milpitas.
— Broadcom, 1267 layoffs in Palo Alto.
— Salesforce, 1,202 staffing reductions in San Francisco.
— Intel, 1,118 job cuts in Santa Clara and San Jose.
— Twitter (now X), 900 layoffs in San Jose and San Francisco.
— PayPal, 772 job cuts in San Jose.
— LinkedIn, 711 layoffs in Sunnyvale, Mountain View and San Francisco.
Despite the Bay Area’s struggling tech industry, the nine-county region has managed to add jobs during the latest one-year period on record.
Over the 12 months ending in July, the Bay Area gained 32,300 jobs, the EDD reported.
In stark contrast, during the year that ended in July, tech companies chopped a net total of 16,000 jobs in the Bay Area, according to a Beacon Economics estimate derived from the EDD’s seasonally adjusted figures.
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