Companies in the technology industry discussing ‘hiring’ in earnings call transcripts increased by 29% year-on-year (YoY) in Q3 2022, with a total of 258 companies discussing this topic, finds GlobalData. However, the leading data and analytics company notes that there is a 12% decline in sentiment, which indicates companies could be preparing for a hiring slowdown.

Companies with high mentions around hiring include Trend Micro, Veritone, HCL technologies, and GitLab. Among the top tech companies, in terms of market capitalization, Meta Platforms had the highest hiring mentions. However, it only acquired 3,700 net new recruits in comparison to 5,700 net additions in Q2 2022.

Ekta Chourasia, Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Meta Platforms mentioned a 30% rise in payroll and related expenses as a result of increasing employee headcount in its general and administrative functions in the past few months, which has resulted in an increase in loss from operations. The company now anticipates a slowdown in hiring activity going forward. As a result, a slowdown in payroll growth is expected in the near-term.”

Apart from limiting hiring, technology companies are also adopting other cost mitigating measures such as lowering compensation for salaried employees, deferring projects, temporarily closing branches, and reducing product development cycles.

Other tech companies like Shopify mentioned only a modest increase in headcount at the yearend of 2022 versus the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, NVIDIA expects slow hiring in the second half of fiscal year 2023 on account of a fall in income from operations by 4% from a year ago.

Alphabet plans to continue to focus on hiring for only critical roles (technical and engineering talent), while Qualcomm mentioned implementing a hiring freeze.