Tech rout continues as Yahoo staff cull adds to over 30,000 job losses in sector this year

Yahoo has become the latest tech giant to announce huge job losses, as the cost of living crisis forces digital advertisers to reign back on their spending.

The American web provider said it was axing over 20 per cent of its entire workforce, with the cuts expected to make 1,600 current workers redundant, including 1,000 this week, Axios heard yesterday.

The layoffs are a result of Yahoo’s restructuring of its unprofitable ‘Yahoo for Business’ advertising subdivision, not due to financial struggles according to boss Jim Lanzone in an interview with Axios.

CNBC reported that tech companies had laid off more than 70,000 staff in the 12 months ending January. l

Lanzone said the move will be “tremendously beneficial” for Yahoo’s overall moneymaking success.

The Yahoo enterprise generates an annual revenue of around $8bn (£6.6bn).

In the restructuring effort, Yahoo plans to cancel its supply-side platform (SSP), the part of its advertising business that allows online publishers to monetise their digital content with ads.

Instead the tech firm will streamline its focus on its demand-side platform (DSP), rebranding it as ‘Yahoo Advertising’, which assists advertisers by automating the ad-buying process across multiple sites.

Many advertisers are stripping back their spending as inflation continues to pile pressure on companies and the economic outlook remains bleak.

Yahoo, owned by Apollo Global Management, joins the ranks of tech companies laying off staff after many of them over-hired during the pandemic and find themselves needing to slim down again.

In January Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs, blaming cuts in company spending on tech, while Amazon cut 17,000 jobs the same month.

Streaming service Spotify cut 600 while earlier this month eBay said it was shedding 500 jobs.