Experts have warned that the one trigger most likely to turn ongoing tech layoffs into a full‑blown regional recession in the Bay Area would be a sharp, sustained drop in overall employment, as major firms from Oracle to Meta and LinkedIn keep cutting staff across Silicon Valley in 2024. While hundreds of jobs have gone in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Menlo Park and other hubs in recent months, labour economists say the wider tech sector is so large, and still so resilient, that the region is not yet in recession territory.
The latest cuts are only the newest chapter in a story that began with the post‑pandemic comedown. Tech companies grew aggressively during Covid, then began slashing roles from 2022 onwards as interest rates rose and investors demanded profits over headcount. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) and regional business groups have been tracking those cuts closely, looking for signs that what started as a correction could morph into a jobs shock.
