WASHINGTON: Apple has laid off more than six hundred employees, according to data from a California state agency, the first known post-pandemic job cuts at the iPhone juggernaut. The California-based company was largely spared from last year’s massive rounds of job cuts at Amazon, Meta, Google and other tech giants after a major hiring spree during the coronavirus pandemic. According to the California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as WARN, Apple laid off 614 workers in several offices on March 27.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday. According to Bloomberg, the job cuts were related to the company’s scuppered plans to produce an electric car, ending a struggling decade-long project. The iPhone maker had dedicated nearly 2,000 employees to its secretive car development program, Bloomberg reported, but faced an increasingly competitive electric vehicle (EV) sector. The full scope of the layoffs could be wider as Apple is only legally required to notify of job cuts in California. — AFP