The hopes of the capitalist system seemed to be placed on a group of companies whose main characteristic was adaptation to the new universal rules of the game: the omnipresence of globalization. In February 2020 the shares of Zoom Video They were trying to reach US$80, just before the start of the pandemic in which it stood out as a symbol of one of the solutions to the planetary health crisis: by October of the same year, its price had multiplied by 6.
The boom
The same was the case with the rest of the technology companies: the confinement promoted the use of virtual connection tools and promoted new ways of working, generated never seen urban movements and it even fed the wave of the “great resignation” among qualified workers from developed countries, but also among the Argentine technological elite. Three years later, the share price returned to its original place but the expansion of its market and the flow of profits in buyers and sellers was notable.
This illusion was mixed with a very different economic context: the response of the governments (without distinguishing political color or ideological orientation) was to issue money to cushion the abrupt fall of tax collection, but that same monetary tsunami that saved from a major recession generated, with a delay of one year, an inflationary wave, also combined with problems in the supply of inputs due to logistical reasons in the production chain of the large factory world that is Southeast Asia.
The answer to this inflationary threat (with indices between 8% and 20% depending on the country and its characteristics) was to raise the interest rate, a movement initiated by the Federal Reserve (FED) starting from values almost established at 0%, which each quarter adjusting to reach 4.5% last month with forecasts.
As this framework developed, the expansion of big tech It was on the rise, even generating movements within the United States Congress and the European Commission for antitrust investigations or large-scale tax avoidance.
Downhill
But suddenly, all this movement was diluted with a brake articulated by two issues: the first indications that the “colonization” of the market was running out and the end of an era of almost zero-rate financing. Even though the rates are still neutral or slightly negative, the projections for the following semesters show that as unemployment falls and the US economy shows signs of coming out of stagnation With low inflation, the plans of these giants changed and the adjustment variable was to cut jobs on the same scale with which they work: worldwide.
Already during 2022 it is estimated that there were a total of 160,000 layoffs registered among more than 1,000 companies in the sector. So far this year, another 95,000 layoffs have already been announced. Last month, Google announced that it was cutting 12,000 positions, which was equivalent to 6% of its entire global workforce. Zoom announced that it will eliminate 1,300 positions (15% of its payroll) and lower the base salary of its top executives. mark zuckerberg would soon undertake a new pruning in Goal.
Dell it also removed 5% of its labor force (6,600 workers); PayPal He did the same with another 2,000 (7% of the total). In addition, Amazon announced that it would cut 18,000 jobs in the future, but that means just over 1% of its total workforce (1.5 million, being one of the largest private employers on the planet).
salesforce already warned that is laying off another 8,000 (10%) and coinbase (a cryptocurrency management platform) suffered a double hit (due to the fall in its financial market) and laid off just under 1,000 employees (20% of the total). Spotify, the world leader in audio platforms, announced at the end of February that it would cut 6% of its workforce, that is, some 600 jobs.
In all cases, in addition to the particularities of each market, the official communication of each company, very carefully given the scope of the impact on the stock market, was that slowdown in market growth it forced us to recalculate the growth projections that had driven the previous boom.
The twists and turns in the large monetary variables affected the stock market but rcaused the “fundamentals” of the industryinviting them to return to their own nature: estimate future profits based on added value.
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