On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it will eliminate 10,000 employees, reducing its workforce by 5%, and Amazon began conducting layoffs that will eventually slash 18,000 jobs. Microsoft and Amazon are joining tech industry peers including Alphabet and Meta which have also cut staff in recent months. But an underappreciated factor is how rapidly tech companies ramped up hiring over the last two years. In 2020, widespread Covid lockdowns made internet applications more important to people, supercharging business for many tech companies. Apple is a major exception: It did not appreciably increase its rate of hiring over the last two years, and also has not announced any layoffs.

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