- Dell has about 13,000 fewer employees than at the start of 2023, meaning it has nearly doubled the number of layoffs claimed.
- Although Dell has publicly said it plans to cut jobs before, the 13,000 figure is still far more than expected.
- The emergence of AI-enabled systems will clearly revitalise the PC market, which will be a huge boon for Dell that might be able to solve its current woes.
One tech giant’s layoffs hit 13,000
Dell revealed this week that it has 120,000 employees, about 13,000 fewer than at the start of 2023. That means it cut nearly twice as many jobs as it previously said. That revelation was somewhat obscured yesterday by a 198-page 10-K filed by the IT giant with the US securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
As of February 2, Dell had 120,000 employees on its payroll, it told regulators. On February 3 of last year, Dell said it had 133,000 employees, and while it has since announced layoffs, the 13,000 job cuts are much larger than expected.
“Throughout fiscal year 2024, we continued to take certain steps to reduce costs, including restrictions on external hiring, employee restructuring and other actions,” Dell wrote in its SEC filing.
“Despite these difficult decisions, we continue to focus on empowering our employees and attracting, developing and retaining talent.”
Also read: Sony SIE announced global layoffs of 8% of its total workforce
Also read: News: Google’s CEO faces employee questions about layoffs
Hope raised by AI
When Dell announced layoffs due to declining demand for personal computers, 6,650 employees were expected to be laid off. Securities filings show that the number of people who were laid off nearly doubled, or were simply fed up with Dell’s work-from-home strategy.
The mismatch between what Dell disclosed in early 2023 and the actual number of layoffs could be even worse than expected PC sales. Just a month after the layoffs in February of that year, IDC cut its forecast for PC and tablet shipments by 26 million units, or just over 6 percent. The emergence of AI-enabled systems will clearly revitalise the PC market, which will be a huge boon for Dell. IDC forecasts that shipments are expected to grow 3.7% year-on-year in 2024, ending the decline in the market since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like its rivals HP and Lenovo, Dell has jumped on the AI hype with high hopes that the demand for machine learning PCS will kick-start its business. Of course, it’s not entirely clear that the desire for AI will be able to overcome the currently underperforming global computing economy.
