Google Is Reportedly Pausing Hiring for Two Weeks

The pauses are piling up.

Google will go on a hiring pause for two weeks, The Information reported Wednesday, citing a leaked email from top executive Prabhakar Raghavan.

“We’ll use this time to review our headcount needs and align on a new set of prioritized Staffing Requests for the next three months,” he reportedly wrote in the memo.

Raghavan also said the company would not take back offers already in play but would not make new ones for two weeks, the outlet added.

Last week, the CEO of Google warned employees that it would pump the brakes on hiring for the rest of the year and encouraged staff to be more “entrepreneurial.”

The tech industry had a profitable pandemic (Alphabet, Google’s parent company, hired 23,000 people from March 2021 to March 2022). But things have soured of late, with Google and other social media and technology companies pausing or slowing down hiring.

On Tuesday, Wired reported TikTok was planning to rework operations and likely lay people off, the same day Bloomberg reported Apple’s plans to slow hiring and spending in select areas of the company. Twitter has also announced a hiring freeze.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit, is the official arbiter of when the U.S. is in a recession, and economists in Bloomberg’s monthly survey upped the probability that one is coming, per CNBC. This comes after last week’s news that inflation has not slowed down.

“Google is reading the room and following the trend of other Big Tech players slowing hiring into 2023 given the macro storm clouds,” tech analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said via text

“We view this as a prudent move,” he added. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.