The total is minuscule compared with the 6.6 million people who, according to the Labor Department, filed for US unemployment benefits last week. In the retail industry alone, more than 1.3 million people have been furloughed as stores and restaurants shut their doors.
Scores of software makers and internet companies rely on retail, travel and food industries, and many will look for ways to trim costs in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak."Those are the industries where they're not going to have revenue," said Jillian Ryan, principal analyst at eMarketer."And when you don't have revenue happens."
Expedia said in February that it's cutting 3,000 jobs, or about 12 per cent of its workforce, saying it wanted to streamline a"bloated organisation" and return to more disciplined growth. There was no mention of the coronavirus in the announcement, but by then the virus was well on its way to becoming a pandemic and had already begun curbing travel.
The next wave of layoffs, he believes, will come from companies with businesses one layer removed, like financial tech, marketing and recruiting. Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins has also told his company's roughly 75,000 employees not to worry about losing their job."To me it's just silly for those of us who have the financial wherewithal to absorb this, for us to add to the problem," he said this week."It's illogical."