Google will cut 100 employees at its video platform, YouTube, continuing piecemeal layoffs after shedding more than 1,000 jobs in the past week.
The tech giant notified workers from YouTube’s operations and creator management teams that their positions had been eliminated, according to an e-mail reviewed by The New York Times.
“We have made the decision to eliminate some roles and say goodbye to some of our teammates,” YouTube’s chief business officer, Mary Ellen Coe, wrote in a note to employees at the organisation. “Anyone in the Americas” and the Asia-Pacific region “who is or may be impacted will be notified by the end of day today”, the note said.
The layoffs, which were earlier reported by the blog Tubefilter, primarily affect groups of employees who offer support to YouTube’s millions of content creators, two sources with knowledge of the cuts said.
YouTube has struggled to fully recover from an advertising slowdown in the past year and has contended with strong competition from TikTok, the short-video service popular with younger users.
“We’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” Andrea Faville, YouTube’s head of corporate communications, said. Various Google teams conducted layoffs and reorganisations in the second half of 2023, and “some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organisational changes, which include some role eliminations globally”.
In a note to employees on Wednesday, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, said they should expect to see cuts for the rest of the year, but not as big 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 ballooned from 119,000 in December 2019. One year ago, Google began the process of shedding about 6 per cent of its workforce, or 12,000 people.
YouTube generates some of its revenue from ads that play before and during videos. But the platform’s reliable growth was interrupted by an ad slowdown that began in late 2022, when rising inflation and interest rates caused advertisers to slash their budgets. YouTube recorded declining revenue for several quarters, stopping that slide in June. Even now, ad sales have not yet surpassed their previous rate of growth.
The platform has focused on selling more subscriptions to YouTube TV, its alternative to cable programming, which is now available with the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket, a package that gives weekly access to various 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 were laid off have 60 days to find new roles within the company before their dismissals officially take effect.
