KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 16): Lay-offs in the US tech sector have continued into 2023, after more than 100,000 people were laid off from the US tech industry last year.

In a report last Friday (Jan 13), Crunchbase, which tracks trends, investments and news of global companies from start-ups to the Fortune 1000, said more than 21,000 workers in US-based tech companies had been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2023.

It said that last year, over 107,000 jobs were slashed from public and private tech companies, as they were forced to confront rising inflation rates and a tumultuous stock market.

The economy has come to reckon with a culture of overzealous hiring and soaring valuations, and start-ups are now forced to carry themselves through a frosty market, as venture funding becomes barren.

Crunchbase said tech companies as big as Qualtrics, Carta and Verily had slashed jobs this year, citing overhiring during periods of rapid growth.

The firm sources the lay-offs from media reports, its own reporting, social media posts and layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database of tech lay-offs.