Online payment company, Paypal, has announced plans to cut its global workforce by 2,000 or 7% as part of cost-cutting measures. 

The company said this decision becomes inevitable in the face of the “challenging macro-economic environment.” 

Paypal’s announcement came as the latest in the series of layoffs by big tech companies, which have affected thousands of tech workers globally.  

Message to the employees: The Chief Executive Officer of Paypal, Dan Schulman, in a message to the company’s employees noted that while the company had made some progress in right-sizing its cost structure, it realized that has to do more to remain in business. 

• “Over the past year, we made significant progress in strengthening and reshaping our company to address the challenging macroeconomic environment while continuing to invest to meet our customers’ needs. While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do. We must continue to change as our world, our customers, and our competitive landscape evolves. 

• Addressing these changes requires us to make hard decisions that will impact some of our colleagues. Today, I’m writing to share the difficult news that we will be reducing our global workforce by approximately 2,000 full-time employees, which is about 7% of our total workforce. These reductions will occur over the coming weeks, with some organizations impacted more than others.  
• “We will treat our departing colleagues with the utmost respect and empathy, provide them with generous packages, engage in consultation where required, and support them with their transitions. I want to express my appreciation for the meaningful contributions they have made to PayPal,” Schulman said in the memo

Difficult change: While noting that the change was a difficult one to make, Schulman said all the company’s staff would face the difficulty together by drawing on the unparalleled scale of its global platform, the strategic investments it has made to strengthen its core capabilities, and the trust and loyalty of its customers. 

• “Over the next days and weeks, your leaders will share the specific impacts within your business units and teams. Our leadership team will communicate regularly and openly. This will be a challenging period for our community, but I am confident we will come through it together with compassion for each other, our values at the fore, and a shared commitment to the future of PayPal,” he added. 

Tougher year for tech: While the layoffs by big tech companies started last year with the likes of Meta and Twitter making a big cut, things are getting tougher for tech workers this year with the bigger number of downsizing announced in just one month into 2023.