The business professional social media platform LinkedIn has shut down its China job app as well as announcing more than 700 job cuts from its global workforce.
LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft Corp and which has 20,000 employees, has grown revenue each quarter during the last year, but it joins other major technology companies including its parent in laying off workers amid a weakening global economic outlook.
In the past six months, more than 270,000 tech jobs globally have been cut, according to Layoffs.fyi, which has been tracking the fallout.
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LinkedIn makes money through ad sales and also by charging for subscriptions to recruiting and sales professionals who use the network to find prospects.
In a letter to employees, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said the move to cut roles in its sales, operations and support teams was aimed at streamlining the company’s operations and would remove layers to help make quicker decisions.
“With the market and customer demand fluctuating more, and to serve emerging and growth markets more effectively, we are expanding the use of vendors,” Roslansky wrote.
A LinkedIn spokesperson said the vendors were “external partners” who would take on new and existing work.
Roslansky also said in the letter that the changes would result in creating 250 new jobs. The spokesperson said that employees affected by the cuts would be eligible to apply for those roles.
Amazon, Meta, Google Job Cuts
LinkedIn also said it was eliminating the slimmed down jobs app that it offers in China after it decided in 2021 to mostly withdraw from the country, citing a “challenging” environment. The remaining China app, called InCareers, will be phased out by August 9, LinkedIn said.
“Despite our initial progress, InCareer faced fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate, which ultimately led us to the decision of discontinuing the service,” the company told users of the website.
LinkedIn will retain a presence in China to help companies operating there to hire and train employees outside the country, the company spokesperson said.
In the tech sector, large companies have accounted for the bulk of recent layoffs, including 27,000 at Amazon, the most in its history. Facebook owner Meta shed 21,000, and Google parent Alphabet has laid off 12,000.
Before LinkedIn’s announcement, 5,000 technology jobs had been in eliminated in May alone, according to Layoffs.fyi.
Microsoft, which bought LinkedIn for around $26 billion in 2016, has announced some 10,000 job cuts in recent months and took a $1.2 billion charge related to the layoffs.
- Reuters with additional editing by Sean O’Meara
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