Home rental and hospitality company Airbnb has reportedly laid off 30 percent of its recruiting staff this week. The decision is speculated to be an indication of more widespread layoffs despite the company reporting its first profitable year in 2022, with a net income of $1.9 billion. The decision to lay off staff affected less than 0.4 percent of the San Francisco-based company’s total workforce of about 6,800, according to Bloomberg.
The report comes as a shock as the company is planning to expand its overall headcount in 2023.
In February, the company said that it expects headcount growth in the range of 2 percent to 4 percent this year, compared to 11 percent growth last year.
Read More: Govt Hikes Windfall Tax on Crude Oil, Removes Exports Duty On Jet Fuel
“We’re going to continue to grow, but we’re going to grow modestly,” Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson said on the company’s latest earnings call that it still sees room to hire, Livemint reported.
Late last year, Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky said that the state of the economy won’t affect how the company’s business is run.
However, in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Airbnb had laid off 25 percent of its workforce, or nearly 1,900 employees, as its business was hit hard when global travel came to a standstill.
Earlier on Friday, Alphabet Inc’s self-driving technology unit, Waymo, laid off 137 employees, in its second round of job cuts. Waymo has cut a total of 209 jobs this year, so far.
Read More: Sovereign Gold Bond scheme 2023: Check subscription date, price, discount and interest rate
The job cuts were part of wider layoffs across the auto and tech industry, which saw companies like Rivian Automotive Inc, General Motors Co Twitter Inc, and Meta Platforms Inc laying off employees.
Last month, Twitter laid off at least 200 employees or about 10 percent of its workforce as the company posted a headcount of about 2,300 active employees, according to Elon Musk.
