Microsoft’s LinkedIn said it is shutting down its China-focused jobs app and cutting 716 positions globally, citing slow revenue growth and changes in customer behavior as it lays off its workforce amid economic pressures. has become the latest US tech company to crunch the numbers.
LinkedIn Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said in a letter to employees on Monday that teams globally would be reorganized and the company would use more sellers to keep up with changing customer demands.
He said the professional networking service’s product and engineering teams in China would be shuttered, while corporate, sales and marketing operations would be downsized in the country.
A China jobs app called InCareer was introduced by LinkedIn in 2021 after its social media exit in China, but has struggled against local competition. The app will be phased out by August 9 amid “stiff competition and a challenging macroeconomic environment”.
Parent company Microsoft said last month that its growth slowed last quarter as economic concerns cooled consumer demand and corporate orders for the company’s software and cloud services. Revenue for the three months to March rose 7% from a year earlier.
US tech-industry job cuts in recent months include Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft. More than 350,000 people have lost their jobs at tech companies since the beginning of 2022, with nearly 191,000 job losses this year, according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi.
Companies started feeling the effects of inflation and rising interest rates last year. Some also said that they have added too many workers in recent years.
LinkedIn, which has 20,000 employees globally, saw revenue rise 8% from a year earlier for the three months through March, Microsoft said in its most recent earnings report.
In 2021, LinkedIn said it was shutting down the version of its site operated in China, marking the end of the last major US social-media network operating openly in the country.
The company said at the time that it made the decision after “facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”
Microsoft’s Bing search engine and its cloud-based business-software business remain in China, and its Windows operating system still dominates in the country.
In late 2021, LinkedIn introduced IncCareer in China, a simplified version of LinkedIn without the social feed.
The online recruitment market in China has been dominated by domestic players over the years. According to iResearch, a local consulting firm, the three largest companies—51job.com, Zhaopin and Liepin.com—command more than 70% of the market share by 2021, the latest year for which data is available.