HP cuts thousands of jobs as PC demand slumps

HP has announced it intends to cut 10% of its workforce as the company adjusts to falling demand for business computers and mobile workstations as enterprises everywhere continue recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The computing giant has revealed (opens in new tab) its 2022 fiscal year results, showing fourth quarter revenues down 14.8% compared to the same period last year.

The cuts, which will impact anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 employees, may lay struggles bare not just for HP, but for PC manufacturers at large, as companies may be buying less equipment to accommodate good hybrid working practices, and cutting tech stack costs amid an ongoing recession.

HP’s cost cutting measures 

As noted by the Wall Street Journal (opens in new tab), the mass layoffs come after HP expanded the workforce by around 10,000 workers compared to this time last year. 

However, the company has realized that there are other ways to save money beyond throwing away the lives of ordinary employees also trying to stay afloat in a cost of living crisis. 

In what it calls its “Fiscal year 2023 Future Ready transformation” and anyone else might call “a slew of cost-cutting measures”, HP claimed it would make savings across around “digital transformation, portfolio optimization and operational efficiency”.

One specific example it gave was taking advantage of plummeting demand for hardware by relying on less expensive, slower sea freight deliveries as opposed to faster air freight.

HP’s announcement of new cost-cutting strategies comes after the publication of data (opens in new tab)showing that PC demand across the entire hardware manufacturing industry is tailing off at the fastest rate it has in two decades, with no sign of stopping. 

Evidence for this lies in the WSJ’s recent reports that Intel (opens in new tab) and Advanced Micro Devices (opens in new tab) (AMD) are also turning to cost-cutting measures in order to ease economic strain.