Google parent to cut 12,000 jobs as tech sector sheds more than 200,000 posts over 12 months.

Google’s parent company will axe 12,000 staff, pushing total tech job losses in the past 12 months above 200,000, as industry bosses concede they overextended during the pandemic’s digital boom.

The industry-wide cull has affected more than 50,000 people across just four Big Tech companies that also include Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. Apple is the largest tech company yet to announce any significant cuts.

Even before Friday’s announcement from Google, more than 193,000 jobs had gone at tech companies globally since the start of 2022, according to estimates from Layoffs.fyi, which aggregates reports of cuts.

Enterprise software giant Salesforce recently said it would cut 10 per cent of its staff, while Twitter cut half its workforce of 7,500 after it was acquired by Elon Musk.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a letter to employees. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

“I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” he added.

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