WSJ: ‘How Apple Has So Far Avoided Layoffs: Lean Hiring, No Free Lunches’

Aaron Tilley, reporting yesterday for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

From its fiscal year-end in September 2019 to September 2022, Apple’s workforce grew by about 20% to approximately 164,000 full-time employees. Meanwhile, over roughly the same period, the employee count at Amazon doubled, Microsoft’s rose 53%, Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s increased 57% and Facebook owner Meta’s ballooned 94%.

Apple has about 65,000 retail employees working in more than 500 stores who make up roughly 40% of the company’s total workforce.

I would argue that it’s not so much that Apple has hired “lean”, but rather that its peers have hired profligately in the last 4 years. Amazon is different because they have so many retail and warehouse jobs, but it makes no sense to me that Facebook doubled its headcount after 2019 other than that they were hiring for the sake of hiring.

Update: Good chart from Chartr showing headcounts among Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook since 2018.

★ Sunday, 22 January 2023