Tech consulting giant Accenture cutting 19K jobs

The global tech consulting group Accenture on Thursday announced it’s laying off roughly 19,000 people as it works to cut costs, streamline operations and grapple with a difficult economic landscape. 

The Dublin, Ireland-based company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it continues to hire but plans to slash roughly 2.5 percent of its workforce over the next 18 months, noting that more than half of the layoffs are expected to include people working in non-billable corporate functions. 

“Our results of operations are affected by economic conditions, including macroeconomic conditions, the overall inflationary environment and levels of business confidence,” Accenture said in the filing.

“There continues to be significant economic and geopolitical uncertainty in many markets around the world, which has impacted and may continue to impact our business, particularly with regard to wage inflation and volatility in foreign currency exchange rates,” the filing continued. “In some cases, these conditions have slowed the pace and level of client spending.”

The company reported that it expects annual revenue growth for fiscal 2023 to be between 8 percent and 10 percent, a slight downgrade from an earlier estimate of between 8 percent and 11 percent.

The Accenture announcement comes as companies in several sectors move to slash jobs amid an uncertain economic picture as the U.S. deals with high inflation and recession fears.

Bloomberg reported last month that consulting giant McKinsey & Co. plans to cut about 2,000 jobs. In the tech space, shipping giant Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet, social media giant Meta and music streaming app Spotify have all cut staff in a string of recent Silicon Valley layoffs.