Ebay to cut 1,000 jobs amid challenges to e-commerce site

Ebay says staffing and costs have outpaced growth as it joins Amazon, Google, Meta, and other platforms in shedding jobs

Ebay will cut about 1,000 jobs, or 9% of its full-time employees, and reduce work for outside contractors, saying staffing and costs have outpaced growth. The online e-commerce company said it needs to be “more nimble” in the face of a “challenging” economic environment. The shares gained slightly in New York trade.

“While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business,” the company said in a statement. 

"To address this, we’re implementing organisational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world,” it said.

The announcement marks the second round of job reductions at Ebay in a year. The online marketplace in February 2023 said it would cut about 500 employees, or about 4% of its workforce, citing a slowdown in consumer spending following the pandemic-fuelled e-commerce boom.

Ebay joins over 60 other tech companies, including Amazon and Google parent Alphabet, that have let almost 11,000 employees go so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks tech industry job cuts.

For years, Ebay has been losing market share to bigger rivals such as Amazon and US retailing giant Walmart and has been gradually selling pieces of the company.

Chief executive Jamie Iannone is trying to find niches for the site, such as luxury watches and collectibles, as well as highlighting refurbished items to appeal to cost-conscious shoppers. The company had 132m active buyers at the end of last September, down 3% from a year earlier.

Earlier this month a memo sent out by Google chief executive Sundar Pichai warned staff that there could be further cuts this year as the company looked to invest more in artificial intelligence. In early 2023, the company cut its workforce by 12,000.

This came after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta revealed plans last March to cut 10,000 jobs, which had hit a peak headcount of 87,000 in 2022.

This month has also seen language learning app Duolingo lose about 10% of its contract workforce, as part of a move by the company to rely more heavily on AI.

Amazon cut hundreds of jobs on its streaming platform Twitch, and its film and television studios division in the second week of January.

• Bloomberg and Guardian Service