• By Vaamanaa Sethi
  • Sat, 10 Jun 2023 05:22 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND

JE Business Desk: United States-based firms — Los Angeles Times and Cohesity — have laid off employees due to the ongoing economic slowdown. While Los Angeles Times is a news company, Cohesity is a data management service provider. 

Los Angeles Times has fired over 13% of its newsroom staff, including managers, copy editors and reporters. Some photographers, audience engagement editors, and audio producers will also be impacted as well.

Executive Editor Kevin Merida of the Los Angeles Times said, "The decision was made more urgent by the economic climate and the unique challenges of our industry. Decisions that result in talented staffers losing their jobs are agonising. We will be saying goodbye to some tremendous colleagues," as quoted by IANS.

The layoffs came as Los Angeles Times was experiencing advertisement declines, which is a major problem as it is the major source of earnings for media houses. The media company has about 5,50,000 digital subscribers, including via direct sales and third-party partnerships, such as Apple News+. After the job cuts, around 500 newsroom employees will remain.

Whereas, Cohesity hasn’t confirmed the number of employees affected by the fresh round of job cuts. It has also fired its chief marketing officer Lynn Lucas. The company claims that the major reason behind this is to optimise its workforce. The company had 2,289 employees as of April 2023. Lucas, who was appointed as the CMO in 2018 has also left the company. 

"Cohesity has made the tough decision to optimise our workforce, with a twofold goal of having more flexibility to increase our investments in strategic areas of critical importance to our customers, and becoming cash flow positive in FY24," said a company spokesperson, as quoted by IANS.

Cohesity was incorporated in 2013 and is currently headquartered in California. It expanded its operations in the Asia-Pacific region in 2018. "We will ensure that impacted employees receive resources and support from Cohesity, and where possible can be redeployed to open roles within the company. We will also continue to recruit globally in areas of strategic importance to Cohesity," the spokesperson further added.

Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc has sacked 50 more jobs from its London unit. The banking company has cut 30 investment banking jobs and 20 more in its corporate banking unit.