January 2023 Saw the Highest Startup Layoffs in Carta History

January 2023 Saw the Highest Startup Layoffs in Carta History

Author

Peter Walker

|

Read time: 

1 minute

Published date: 

March 6, 2023

January 2023 saw the highest single-month layoff count ever recorded for US Carta startups—even higher than the peak COVID anxiety levels of April 2020.

LinkedIn: January 2023 Saw the Highest Startup Layoffs in Carta History

We all hoped 2023 would bring new chapter in the startup tech layoff story. Sadly it's been more of the same.

January 2023 saw the highest number of laid off employees across Carta companies since we began tracking. Even higher than peak Covid levels.

Of course, there are more startups using now than in 2020, so things are not quite as gloomy on a percentage basis. However, as you see in the chart's orange line, layoffs have been steadily climbing across our 35,000+ startups for the last 10 months.

Silver lining: the number of folks leaving their jobs by choice (black line) stopped falling in Jan. I take that as a positive signal that tech talent is more willing to choose the promise of a new gig over the stability of a current one.

If you'd like to learn about how these trends affect the tech hiring market, we've got many more details in our recent compensation report: https://lnkd.in/g2dM-HbG

Sincerely hope that the impacted employees haven't lost their enthusiasm for building new companies - we need that energy now more than ever.

#cartadata #layoffs #startups #compensation #hiring #comptrends

Peter Walker
Author: Peter Walker
Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, focused on discovering key data and narratives across the private capital ecosystem. In a former life, he was a marketing executive for a media analytics startup and led the data visualization team at the Covid Tracking Project.

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