Apple’s Employee Count Grew During 2024 Despite Four Rounds of Layoffs
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Apple’s employee count grew during 2024, even though Apple went through four rounds of smaller-scale layoffs during the year. Apple now has as many employees as it did in 2022, following a slight decrease in employment numbers in 2023.
In a filing last week, Apple disclosed that as of late September, it employed approximately 164,000 full-time employees worldwide. That’s a 3,000-person increase from the 161,000 full-time people the company employed in 2023. The “full-time” employment number includes corporate employees at Apple offices around the world and retail employees at its worldwide chain of retail locations.
Apple’s full-time employee counts for the last seven years, per the company’s filings, are as follows:
- 2024: 164,000
- 2023: 161,000
- 2022: 164,000
- 2021: 154,000
- 2020: 147,000
- 2019: 137,000
- 2018: 132,000
The increase in employee numbers comes despite Apple laying off small numbers of employees in four rounds during 2024.
In January, Apple relocated a Siri evaluation team from its San Diego, California, facility to Austin, Texas. Some of the 120-person team were not willing to make the move to Texas, so they were laid off. The employees on the team are primarily responsible for evaluating Siri’s responses to queries from customers who have opted into the Siri grading program. In addition to the team in Austin, Apple has other teams handling the same task in China, Ireland, Singapore, Spain, and other countries.
In April, Apple laid off more than 600 employees when it canceled its long-running electric vehicle project and its microLED display project for the Apple Watch. The employees worked in several Apple-occupied buildings in the Santa Clara area in California, near the company’s Cupertino Apple Park headquarters. Many of the locations were associated with the Project Titan vehicle project.
When Apple announced in March that it was terminating the development of the Apple Car project, the approximately 2,000 employees involved in the project were informed of the cancellation, and some of the employees were moved to work on other projects, including the Apple Intelligence project.
Employees who were not reassigned to other projects were told they had 90 days to apply for open positions elsewhere in the company. It’s unknown how many employees found other departments to work in, but considering that some folks on the Apple Car team had been car designers and automotive engineers, many affected employees may not have had skills that could be applied elsewhere within Apple.
Apple also ended its in-house development of microLED displays for the Apple Watch, so some of the layoffs were likely related to that project’s termination. Employees who did not relocate or find another role within Apple received severance pay.
Apple also cut approximately 100 employees from its Services division in August. A Bloomberg report said the job cuts were part of a “shift in priorities.” Laid-off employees were given a 60-day window to secure another position in the company before their termination became effective.
The layoffs occurred across multiple departments and included some employees in engineering roles. While the layoffs primarily hit the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore teams, some members of the Apple News team were also affected.
Apple’s layoff numbers over the past two years have been small compared to other tech companies. While Google and Microsoft have laid off several thousand employees in the aftermath of the global health pandemic, Apple has managed to keep its layoff count down to a much more respectable number. Most analysts believe this is because the company runs lean and mean rather than engaging in “vanity” hiring to bolster staff numbers or keep talent away from competitors.
