Intel Said to be Considering Laying Off Thousands of Staff

The world is without a doubt entering a recession and now the first rumours of mass layoffs in the tech industry are starting. According to Bloomberg, Intel is considering laying off thousands of employees as a measure to cut costs, as its businesses are slowing down. Bloomberg is mainly citing the PC market, which the publication calls Intel’s main business, although Intel’s Client Computing Group (CCG) does a lot more than just selling PC chips, but the group was Intel’s largest source of revenue in Q2 this year by quite some margin. That said, despite a revenue of US$7.7 billion in Q2, this was down 25 percent compared to 2021, which in all fairness was a record year for most companies in the PC industry.

According to Bloomberg, Intel had 113,700 employees as of July this year and the publication said Intel is considering cutting as much as 20 percent of its sales and marketing staff. Bloomberg is expecting Intel to be looking at reducing fixed costs by 10 to 15 percent, although this is unlikely to affect key parts of Intel’s business units. Last quarter, most of Intel’s business units made a healthy profit, but only the Network and Edge Group had a significant revenue increase over the same quarter in 2021, with most other groups being down significantly. The third quarter results aren’t expected to improve upon things, something that appears to be reflected in Intel’s share price, which is down over 50 percent in 2022. That said, all of Intel’s competitors are in the same boat and it’s likely that we’ll see more news about companies that are considering trimming back on their expenses and staff numbers in the near future. Intel is scheduled to report its third quarter earnings on the 27th of October.