Job losses hammer Bay Area tech industry in brutal beginning for 2025

The Bay Area’s tech industry stumbled at the beginning of 2025 with a web lack of hundreds of jobs over the primary two months of this 12 months, a hunch that means the essential sector’s hiring woes have but to run their course.

In the course of the first two months of 2025, tech corporations slashed a web whole of 8,700 jobs in the Bay Area, in response to a Beacon Economics estimate that it derived from state labor company estimates.

The tech sector’s job losses seem like driving a hunch in the Bay Area’s general employment image, which has darkened on the outset of 2025.

“The substantial lack of know-how jobs in the Bay Area thus far this 12 months is a big shock to the Bay Area economic system and labor market,” mentioned Scott Anderson, chief economist with BMO Capital Markets.

Bay Area employers chopped 6,900 tech jobs in January and one other 1,800 in February, the Beacon Economics numbers present.

“The know-how job loss development has been in place for a while now, however the deterioration in the primary two months of the 12 months is regarding,” Anderson mentioned.

The job setbacks for the tech industry present that this once-powerful engine of the Bay Area economic system has sputtered and turn into a drag on a regional employment sector whose hiring used to hum at a sturdy tempo.

“Within the Bay Area, the know-how sector does greater than set the tone for the economic system,” Anderson mentioned.

Here is how the area’s main tech hubs fared over the primary two months of 2025, as disclosed by this information group’s compilation of the Beacon estimates. The entire numbers have been adjusted for seasonal volatility.

The numbers characterize web losses for January and February of this 12 months, since tech corporations engaged in some hiring on the identical time they shed jobs throughout these two months:

• The South Bay misplaced 4,100 tech jobs
• The San Francisco-San Mateo area shed 3,700 tech positions.
• The East Bay misplaced 700 tech jobs.
• Within the North Bay, Sonoma County misplaced 400 tech jobs, Marin County shed 100, whereas Solano County gained 200 tech jobs. The variety of tech jobs in Napa County was unchanged.

The uncertainty over the result of an array of federal authorities insurance policies could have unsettled the tech industry’s typical method to swing for the proverbial baseball fences.

“Our tech corporations have been already on an effectivity push, however the basic tumult out there may be turning beforehand swashbuckling corporations into risk-averse shadows of themselves,” mentioned Russell Hancock. “However the profitability continues to be there.”

Over the identical two months, the Bay Area endured a lack of 9,900 jobs.

Put one other means, the tech industry’s web job losses in the Bay Area accounted for 88% of all the online job losses in the nine-county area thus far this 12 months.

This dynamic strongly signifies that the employment setbacks in the tech industry have begun to crush the general efficiency of the Bay Area job market.

One main concern: The tech sector’s job losses might start to contaminate different industries in the area.

“It’s unlikely different Bay Area service and retail companies can be immune from the fallout from these misplaced tech jobs,” Anderson mentioned.

In February, the Bay Area had roughly 836,400 tech jobs, in response to the Beacon estimates. The Bay Area had roughly 4.01 million non-farm payroll jobs.

This implies the tech industry accounted for 20.9% of the Bay Area’s payroll jobs, roughly one among each 5.

“Given the Bay Area’s historic reliance on tech jobs for its general employment progress, the area will want the tech economic system to stabilize if it will reverse the latest development of general job losses,” mentioned Jeff Bellisario, govt director of the Bay Area Council Financial Discussion board.

Tech corporations seem like looking for methods to proceed to trim their staffs, even after the wide-ranging layoffs that roiled the industry in 2022, 2023 and 2024, consultants warned.

“Whereas we appear to have moved past large layoffs from the area’s tech titans, it’s clear that the method of right-sizing continues to be ongoing in many tech corporations,” Bellisario mentioned.

Throughout 2022, 2023 and 2024, Fb app proprietor Meta Platforms, Tesla, Cisco Programs, Google, Intel, Broadcom and Salesforce have all revealed plans to slash not less than 1,000 jobs every, in response to this information group’s compilation of WARN notices that they’ve filed with the state Employment Division.

Concurrently huge tech corporations have been chopping jobs, the hype over synthetic intelligence has but to translate into an enormous wave of latest hiring in that sector.

“The latest progress in AI corporations hasn’t offset job losses in the general tech sector,” Bellisario mentioned.

The powerful instances for the Bay Area tech industry may persist for a while, consultants imagine.

“Will probably be like this for the foreseeable future,” Hancock mentioned. “Time to hunker down.”

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