Dell axes 6,500 jobs as tech’s long winter continues

Punxsutawney Phil, the designated groundhog of Groundhog Day, has predicted six more weeks of tech industry layoffs after emerging from his burrow and seeing his own shadow last week. Okay, so Phil was actually predicting six more weeks of winter, but that appears to be approximately the same thing this year. Dell announced a huge round of 6550 layoffs this morning, the latest in a long string of high-profile job cuts from the industry’s biggest corporations.

According to Reuters, the job cuts amount to approximately 5 percent of Dell’s 133,000 global headcount. Both the company and the industry as a whole is dealing with a lull in PC sales as the initial rush of the pandemic slows to a crawl. Dell had previously attempted to tighten its belt with a hiring freeze and less corporate travel.

Dell follows Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Intel, HP, Lenovo, and dozens of other companies late last year and into 2023 in making significant job cuts. The trend is in stark contrast to the jobs market as a whole, which is growing at a record-setting pace in the United States. The glut of suddenly unemployed tech workers is having some strange effects: the US National Security Agency is now openly courting former workers at leading tech corporations.