▸ The labor market is strong, but tech layoffs keep coming. There were around 50,000 tech jobs cut in January, and the trend has continued into February.
Video conferencing service Zoom is one of the latest to announce layoffs. The company said Tuesday that it's cutting 1,300 jobs, or 15% of its workforce.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in a blog post on Tuesday that Zoom ramped up employment quickly due to increased demand during the pandemic. The company grew three times in size within 24 months, he said, and now it must adapt to changing demand for its services.
"The uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard — yet important — look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom's long-term vision," he wrote.
Yuan added that he plans to lower his own salary by 98% and forgo his 2023 bonus. Shares of Zoom closed nearly 10% higher on Tuesday.
The announcement comes just one day after Dell said it would lay off more than 6,500 employees.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other tech giants have also recently announced plans to cut thousands of workers as the companies adapt to shifting pandemic demand and fears of a looming recession.
▸ Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis told CNN that he is starting to think that the US economy could avoid a recession and achieve a so-called soft landing.
It's hard to have a recession when the job market is still so robust, he told CNN's Poppy Harlow on Tuesday on CNN This Morning.
Still, "we have more work to do," Kashkari told Harlow, adding that the labor market is "too hot" and that is a key reason why it is "harder to bring inflation back down."
Although many investors are starting to think the Fed may pause after just two more similarly small hikes, to a level of around 5%, Kashkari said he believes the Fed may have to raise rates further. Kashkari has a vote this year on the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed's interest-rate setting group.
▸ It's a good time to be in the oil business. BP's annual profit more than doubled last year to an all-time high of nearly $28 billion.
The British energy company said in a statement that underlying replacement cost profit rose to $27.7 billion in 2022 from $12.8 billion the previous year. The metric is a key indicator of oil companies' profitability.
BP also unveiled a further $2.75 billion in share buybacks and hiked its dividend for the fourth quarter by around 10% to 6.61 cents per share.
BP's shares rose 6% in Tuesday trading following the news. Over the past 12 months, its shares have soared 24%.
The earnings are the latest in a string of record-setting results by the world's biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of skyrocketing oil and gas prices.
Last week, another energy major Shell reported a record profit of almost $40 billion for 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices jumped following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On Wednesday it was TotalEnergies turn. The French company posted annual profit of $36.2 billion for 2022 double the previous year's earnings.
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