LinkedIn is laying off nearly 1,000 employees, approximately 6% of its workforce globally, with unemployment in the U.S. above 13% and national economies from Europe and Asia, to the Americas, shrinking due to the pandemic.
The outbreak has disrupted commerce globally, closing thousands of businesses while forcing others to furlough large numbers of employees as they await a recovery. Hiring has slowed dramatically. The number of people applying for unemployment aid has remained stubbornly high in the past several weeks, a sign that many businesses are still shedding jobs and clouding the outlook for jobs. The overall U.S. unemployment rate in May was 13.3%, a decline from 14.7% in April, according to the Labor Department.
In a note to employees at the professional networking site, CEO Ryan Roslansky said that the job cuts will hit global sales and hiring sections of the company. He said no further layoffs are planned.
LinkedIn employees in the U.S. will receive at least 10 weeks of severance pay and a year of continuing health coverage through COBRA. Those being laid off will continue in their roles through Aug. 21.
It's unclear how many of those job cuts will be felt in Toronto, where there's 200 employees.
But this isn't a sign that employers aren't hiring, according to BNN's Jon Erlichman. Instead, he says this is more about the way LinkedIn works.
"The fact that LinkedIn has fewer recruiters that are hungry to get the best candidates because so many people have been laid off, that's started to feed into the situation where they had to start thinking about cutting some costs."
He says part of that is a lack of advertising on the social media site as well.
"Money is tight," says Erlichman.
When you look at the jobs picture, there are signs of life in this province.
"We went through incredibly difficult times in March and April, but we're starting to see an increase in jobs postings.
Newstalk 1010 reached out to Indeed.com, who say they have no plans to lay off any staff. They are also reporting that the number of job postings is 31% below where we were last year, but that's still a little better compared to where we were in March.
(With files from D Bradley)