HP is reportedly planning on laying off between 25,000 and 30,000 employees, according to dueling reports from Bloomberg and AllThingsD. Both reports come on the heels of a different source who told BusinessInsider that HP would lay off between 32,000 and 48,000 people.
Meg Whitman Reportedly Plans HP Layoffs
Source: Photo of Meg Whitman Published Under Wikimedia Commons
HP has a large work force of some 320,000 employees that include engineering, design, manufacturing, and a large variety of mostly Enterprise-related services. In fiscal 2011, HP reported revenues of US$127.4 billion.
In comparison, Apple reported revenues of $108 billion in fiscal 2011, and the company is on track to report more than $130 billion in revenues for 2012. As of March of 2012, Apple claimed some 47,000 employees in the U.S. and 70,000 employees throughout the world, including its retail employees.
Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of workers (with 700,000 tossed around here and there) in China who make the millions of Apple devices we buy every quarter, though many of these employees make products for other companies, too. Then again, HP also outsources some of its manufacturing, and the company is one of the world’s largest PC makers, so it also has legions of outsourced manufacturing jobs.
The point remains, however, that Apple and HP bring in roughly the same amount of money, while Apple employees 21.9 percent as many people. Plus, Apple makes money hands over first, while HP is struggling to grow revenues, and perhaps even struggling to find an identity.
Enter Meg Whitman, who took over the troubled company in 2011. Bloomberg cited unnamed “sources who had been briefed on the plan,” while AllThingsD cited unnamed “sources familiar with the company’s plan,” and all those sources are saying that Mrs. Whitman is readying the bloody axe, as artfully rendered in the image above.
Their figures put HP planning on laying off some 8 percent of its work force, while BusinessInsider believes the firm will layoff between 10 percent and 15 percent of its force.
All of which is bad news for the company’s employees, and bad news for the Silicon Valley economy, though job cuts could well happen around the world.
In addition to the cuts, the sources have said that Mrs. Whitman plans to invest money in areas that she believes have been neglected in recent years as the company both binged on acquistions and purged employees in existing businesses.
Investors took the news positively on Thursday with the stock ending the day at $22.06, up $0.03 (+0.14%), on moderate volume of 16.7 million shares trading hands. The stock rose in after hours trading, too. For context’s sake, all three major indices lost ground, making HP’s gains a solid victory.
Image made with help from Shutterstock.