LinkedIn, the social media network for professionals owned by Microsoft, announced on Monday that it will be laying off 668 employees. This is the second round of job cuts for LinkedIn this year, and it comes amid slowing revenue growth for the company.
The cuts will affect more than 3% of LinkedIn’s 20,000-strong workforce and will impact employees across the engineering, talent, and finance teams.
In a blog post on Monday, LinkedIn said that the cuts are necessary to “adapt our organizational structures and streamline our decision making.” The company also said that it is “continuing to invest in strategic priorities for our future and to ensure we continue to deliver value for our members and customers.”
The tech sector has been hit hard by layoffs this year, with over 140,000 employees being laid off in the first six months of the year. This is a significant increase from the approximately 6,000 tech workers who were laid off in the same period last year.
LinkedIn makes money through ad sales and by charging for subscriptions to recruiting and sales professionals who use the network to find suitable job candidates. In the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2023 year, LinkedIn’s revenue increased 5% year-on-year, compared to 10% in the previous quarter.
Microsoft has cited a slowdown in hiring along with a decline in advertising spending as headwinds for LinkedIn. However, the company continues to add new members to its community of 950 million users.
The layoffs at LinkedIn are a sign of the challenges facing the tech sector as a whole. The industry is facing a number of headwinds, including inflation, rising interest rates, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. It is unclear how long these challenges will persist, but it is likely that the tech sector will continue to see layoffs in the coming months.