Job site ZipRecruiter cutting 20% of its staff

Fewer employers looking for workers means 270 employees at job search site ZipRecruiter will soon be out of a job. The company is cutting 20% of its staff by the end of this month, the company disclosed in a filing late Wednesday. “This action was taken in response to current market conditions and after reducing other discretionary expenses, with a view toward driving long-term efficiency,” according to the filing. The company had previously said it is experiencing a “typical softness in jobs posting” in January, but sounded other alarms about a slowing in the labor market. Its first quarter revenue fell 19% from a year earlier and it forecast that its revenue in the current quarter would be down nearly 30% from the second quarter of 2022. The job search site still projects adjusted earnings that are roughly the same for this year as last year, although it said to do so it would “respond to our environment quickly” by “increasing our focus on profitability during times of decreased demand from employers.” About half of the 270 employees losing their job are in the sales and customer support teams. The company will take a charge of between $7 million to $9 million to cover severance costs. It expects to still make the same level of profits, excluding special items such as severance, as in its earlier guidance. It also announced that CEO Ian Siegel agreed to a 30% cut in base salary, as of June 1. He has a base salary of $550,000, according to an earlier filing, but had total compensation last year of about twice that amount. Layoffs across the tech sector have become widespread in recent months. Amazon, one of the nation’s largest private-sector employers, has announced two rounds of job cuts this year totaling 27,000 positions, and Facebook holding company Meta has announced 21,000 job cuts since last fall. Alphabet, Microsoft and Salesforce — and especially Twitter — have all announced large job cuts. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Thursday there have been 137,000 layoffs in the sector in the first five months of the year, the most job cuts in the sector since there were 168,000 in all of 2001, the year after the dot.com bubble burst. Despite all the job cuts in technology and also in media, US employers overall are still hiring more people than they’re cutting. Private sector employment increased by 278,000 jobs in May, according to ADP’s monthly National Employment Report released Thursday, much stronger than the 170,000 forecast by economists. Economists are also forecasting a gain of 190,000 jobs for May when the Labor Department issues its monthly jobs report Friday. The April jobs report also came in much stronger than expected, as employers added 253,000 jobs. Still, hiring is at a slower pace than a year ago, when employers added 445,000 jobs a month, on average, in the first half of 2022. The Labor Department’s count of job openings, while up 3% in April compared to March, is down 14% from a year earlier — though that still means there are 1.8 jobs available for every job seeker.