Oracle continues to lay off staff in the US

Oracle is continuing to lay off people in the US, just months after the company acquired healthcare data specialist firm Cerner for $28.3 billion and announced a first round of layoffs, according to published reports.

The layoffs come as hiring for IT jobs slows due to worries about an economic downturn.

In Oracle’s latest round of layoffs, the company cut 201 employees, including data scientists and developers, from its Redwood Shores office, according to reports in the The San Francisco Chronicle and CRN, which cited a letter that Oracle sent to the California Employment Department on September 30.

The letter, otherwise known as a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), said that the job cuts were effective from October 3^rd.

Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but In its letter to the California Employment Department, the company noted that they were not shutting down the Redwood City office as a result of the job cuts.

In July, The Information reported that Oracle was looking to trim jobs in an effort to cut expenditures by $1 billion following the acquisition of healthcare data specialist Cerner that closed in the second week of June. Oracle announced its first round of layoffs across its Bay Area offices in August.

In the last few months, the IT sector in the US has seen many job cuts. Even though there is still overall job growth in the sector, fears of a recession have throttled the positive trend, according to an analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics by Janco, a US-based international consulting firm.

“CIOs and CFOs now are more cautious than they were in the first half of the year.  CIOs do not have a clear understanding of how a downturn will impact their bottom line.  Most still are hiring but at a slower pace.  Some companies have stopped hiring and started laying off employees,” according to the Janco analysis.

Janco has reduced its forecast for 2022 North American IT job market growth to 179,000 from its earlier forecast of 203,900. Though that is a record high number “that will be significantly less growth than in 2021,” Janco said. ” However, most hiring will be limited to filling positions open due to attrition, not staff expansion.”

California itself saw unemployment numbers rise in the month of August. The state’s unemployment rate increased in the month of August 2022 to 4.1 percent, despite the state’s employers adding 19,900 nonfarm payroll jobs to the economy, according to data released today by the California Employment Development Department (EDD) from two surveys.

Information, a group of job category defined by the state that includes motion pictures, video industries and data processing and hosting services, showed the largest month-over job loss in August, the department said.