YouTube is laying off 100 employees as tech layoffs continue

Google will lay off 100 workers at its video platform YouTube on Wednesday, continuing layoffs after cutting more than a thousand jobs in the past week.

The tech giant notified employees of its YouTube operations and creator management teams that their positions had been eliminated, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times. YouTube, the world's most popular video service, employed 7,173 people on Tuesday, a person with knowledge of the total said.

“We have made the decision to eliminate some roles and say goodbye to some of our teammates,” YouTube Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe wrote in a letter to the organization's employees. “Anyone in the Americas” and the Asia-Pacific region “who has been or may be affected will be notified by the end of the day,” the note said.

The layoffs, which were previously reported on the blog Tube filterThis will mainly affect groups of workers who support YouTube's millions of content creators, two people with knowledge of the cuts said.

YouTube has struggled to fully recover from an advertising slowdown over the past year and has faced strong competition from TikTok, the short-video service popular with younger users.

Google has been looking for ways to cut costs and reduce bureaucracy for more than a year. Last Thursday, the company cut more than a thousand jobs from its core engineering division; its voice-activated product, Google Assistant; and some projects with augmented reality, the technology that combines the real world with a digital overlay.

“We are investing responsibly in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” Andrea Faville, YouTube's head of corporate communications, said in a statement. Several Google teams conducted layoffs and reorganizations in the second half of 2023, and “some teams continue to make these types of organizational changes, including some role eliminations globally.”

In a letter to employees on Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said they should expect cuts for the rest of the year, but not as large as what the company experienced last year.

The company reported that it had more than 182,000 employees at the end of September, a figure that has ballooned from 119,000 in December 2019. A year ago, Google began the process of laying off about 6 percent of its workforce, or 12,000 people.

Now an employer who had become known for its comfortable amenities resembles many of its Silicon Valley peers.

Since the new year started, numerous tech companies have announced job cuts. Discord said last week it would lay off 17 percent of its staff, which amounts to 170 people. Amazon has laid off hundreds of employees at its streaming service Twitch, Prime Video and MGM Studios. Xerox said this month it would cut 15 percent of its 23,000-person workforce, and video game software provider Unity Software said it would cut 25 percent of its workforce.

YouTube generates some of its revenue from ads that play before and during videos. But the platform's reliable growth was interrupted by an advertising slowdown that began in late 2022, when rising inflation and interest rates caused advertisers to cut their budgets. YouTube had been recording declining revenues for several quarters and halted this decline in June. Even now, advertising sales have not surpassed their previous growth rate.

The platform has focused on selling more subscriptions to YouTube TV, the alternative to cable programming, which is now available with the National Football League's Sunday Ticket, a package that provides weekly access to several games. YouTube has also said it has more than 80 million subscribers to its services that offer music streaming and ad-free video streaming.

YouTube employees who have been laid off have 60 days to find a new position within the company before their layoff officially takes effect.