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Layoff warning 2024: PwC to lay off 1,800 employees next month





Layoff warning 2024: PwC to lay off 1,800 employees next month



According to exclusive reporting by Mark Maurer in the WSJ, PwC will lay off about 1,800 employees, or about 2.5% of its workforce. This is PwC USPeople. The reason given is “the restructuring of the product and technology group to simplify operations and meet declining demand for certain consulting services.”

The Big Four accounting firm is cutting staff in the U.S. and elsewhere, primarily in its U.S. consulting, product and technology divisions, people familiar with the matter said. The layoffs, about half of which will take place overseas, affect employees from associate to managing director and include corporate services, audit and tax, the people said.

Wait, they're laying off offshore employees? What's going on? The worst part is that the company won't inform the soon-to-be-laid-off employees until October, according to WSJ sources.

Last year we were informed that PwC would be raising the bar on performance reviews to trim some fat without outright laying off employees, and it seems that continued this year. This and a soft return to the office were arguably not effective enough to avoid this unfortunate situation.

The last time we wrote about layoffs at PwC on our side of the world was in 2009: People are still talking about the layoffs at PwC. Allow us to quote a bit from this article written 15 years ago:

Remember the layoffs at PwC in Tampa a week ago? Right. However, the St. Petersburg times I decided to dig a little deeper into this story and discovered a few things that most of you have known for some time: Large accounting firms have two very different sides, and PwC is no exception.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has built an image as one of America's best employers. Competitive pay. Great benefits. A perennial favorite on Fortune List of best workplaces.

The company's human resources experts preached to their clients that they should manage their employees effectively and that layoffs were the last option in times of crisis.

But interviews with half a dozen current and former Pricewaterhouse employees paint a different picture of the firm's financial performance in recent years. Accounting and consulting giant PwC has quietly cut hundreds, if not thousands, of well-paid jobs and outsourced many functions to cheaper labor overseas.

It's tough out there. And the company makes people sweat for a month before they find out if their head is on the chopping block, which doesn't make it any easier.

PwC is laying off 1,800 employees as part of the planned restructuring of its product business [Wall Street Journal]


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