On January 23, Beijing time, TikTok employees revealed that the popular short video app was laying off employees to reduce costs, becoming the latest technology company to launch a new round of layoffs in the United States in recent weeks.A TikTok spokesperson later confirmed that about 60 employees were laid off, mainly in the company's sales and advertising departments. This round of layoffs affected employees in Los Angeles, New York, Austin and outside the United States.TikTok has scheduled a town hall meeting for Tuesday after announcing the layoffs.

Currently, TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the United States, with approximately 7,000 employees in the country. TikTok says it has 150 million monthly active users in the United States. TikTok’s parent company is ByteDance, which has more than 150,000 employees worldwide and a valuation of US$225 billion. It is expected to be the most valuable private company in the world.

TikTok’s round of layoffs is the latest sign that the U.S. technology industry is experiencing pain. Other major U.S. technology companies including Google and Amazon have laid off thousands of employees so far this year. Right now, the entire tech industry is diverting resources into the race to develop new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Many believe that generative AI will be the next technology gold rush.

According to data from layoff.fyi, a technology job tracking website, more than 10,000 technology jobs have been laid off so far in 2024. Prior to this, the technology industry had already suffered a difficult 2023, with a total of approximately 260,000 jobs laid off, setting a record for the largest number of layoffs in the technology industry since the massive layoffs triggered by the new crown epidemic. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls 2023 the "year of efficiency." While the cost-cutting spree continues, most Silicon Valley analysts expect layoffs this year to be much smaller and more targeted than last year.

Tech industry observers have cited a variety of reasons for corporate layoffs, from the tech industry restructuring its workforce to focus on AI, to over-hiring during the pandemic, to companies' desire to squeeze more profits for shareholders. Earlier this month, Amazon's live-streaming gaming platform Twitch laid off a third of its employees, about 500 people. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy wrote in a blog post that the headcount was too high given the company's "conservative" forecasts for future growth.