SANTA CLARA — Intel has revealed plans to chop hundreds of jobs in Northern California, an ominous new sign of widespread layoffs in the increasingly wobbly Silicon Valley tech industry, official state filings show.
The legendary semiconductor company has decided to eliminate jobs in Santa Clara, where the company has its headquarters, as well as in Folsom, a long-time Northern California outpost for Intel, WARN notices filed with the state Employment Development Department disclosed.
The latest layoff notices from Intel mean that since Oct. 1, tech and biotech companies have unveiled job cut plans, or carried out layoffs, that affect well over 7,700 workers in the Bay Area, this news organization’s review of worker-adjustment notices filed with the EDD shows.
An estimated 31 tech and biotech companies have filed WARN notices for layoffs in the Bay Area during this period of slightly more than two months.
“Intel plans to permanently reduce staff” at multiple locations in Santa Clara and one site in Folsom, Carolann Bullock, Intel’s director of employment and labor legal group wrote in the WARN letters to the EDD.
The job cuts include staffing reductions at Intel’s Santa Clara headquarters complex on Mission College Boulevard.
The semiconductor titan said its job cuts are expected to be permanent.
Intel said it had decided to eliminate 90 jobs in Santa Clara and 111 positions in Folsom, for a total of 201 layoffs in Northern California.
An estimated 14 companies decided to eliminate at least 100 jobs in the Bay Area, official state labor agency files show. These tech and biotech firms have disclosed plans for job cuts with a combined total of 6,607 positions:
- Facebook app owner Meta Platforms, 2,564 terminations in Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Fremont and San Francisco
- Twitter, 1,126 layoffs in San Francisco and San Jose
- Cepheid, 1,003 job cuts in Newark, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara
- Nuro, 269 job eliminations in Mountain View
- Amazon, 263 layoffs in Sunnyvale
- Lyft, 227 job cuts in San Francisco
- Oracle, 200 jobs eliminated in Redwood City and Belmont
- Western Digital, 189 jobs in San Jose and Milpitas
- Flex Ltd., 155 positions terminated in Milpitas
- Chime, 152 jobs cut in San Francisco
- Astreya, 144 positions terminated in Newark
- Zymergen, 110 jobs cut in Emeryville
- Synthego, 105 layoffs in Redwood City
- Kittyhawk, 100 job cuts in Mountain View and Palo Alto
Including Intel, another 17 companies have reported job cuts affecting 1,172 workers. High-profile firms such as PayPal, Roku and GoFundMe are among those in this group of smaller cutbacks.
Even worse, tech titans such as San Jose-based Cisco and Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard are warning of thousands of job cuts worldwide, forbidding moves that could extend the layoff pain in the Bay Area.
Intel also had warned it was planning significant employment cutbacks worldwide that now are coming home to roost in the Bay Area.
“No employees have the right to bump or displace other employees,” Intel stated in its WARN notices for Santa Clara and Folsom. “There is no union representing the affected employees.”
The Intel cutbacks were slated to occur over a 14-day period starting on Jan. 31, 2023, according to the WARN notice.
“All employees are being notified of separation with at least 60 days’ notice,” Intel said.
