Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Layoffs, Yes. Job Losses? Nope.

Wolf Street looks at the real numbers, gives the lie to the FooFooDust pumped out by the "Press."

 

Amazon and Alphabet – and other tech companies – keep announcing serial layoffs and buyout-encouraged departures. But they’re still hiring too.

Alphabet’s global headcount on December 31, 2025, reported in its 10-K filing, rose by 7,497 year-over-year, was a hair above where it had been at the end of 2022, when these layoffs started, and only a hair below peak headcount at the end of 2023.

So why these "layoff" announcements?  Part of the reason may be here: 

...But in the two years 2020 and 2021, its headcount had surged by 60%, as it hired helter-skelter and in massive numbers people who worked remotely, amid stories that began circulating of people having two or three full-time remote jobs and pulling in huge amounts of money while skiing or whatever. Exaggerated or not, what was clear is that there would be a lot of sorting out and cleaning up to do afterwards...

Oh.  They found that some of their peeps were not-exactly-faithful spouses??

Heh. 

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