Apple's Employee Count Grew This Year Despite Smaller-Scale Layoffs - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Apple's Employee Count Grew This Year Despite Smaller-Scale Layoffs

Apple's employee count grew in 2024, despite reports that the company had at least four incidents of smaller-scale layoffs this year.

imac video apple feature
As of late September, Apple had approximately 164,000 full-time employees worldwide, the company disclosed in a filing last week. That's up from the 161,000 full-time employees that Apple reported a year ago. These figures include corporate employees, such as software engineers, and retail employees at its stores.

Apple now has as many employees as it did in 2022, following a slight decrease last year.

Apple's full-time employee counts by year, per the company's filings:

  • 2024: 164,000
  • 2023: 161,000
  • 2022: 164,000
  • 2021: 154,000
  • 2020: 147,000
  • 2019: 137,000
  • 2018: 132,000

Apple laid off more than 600 employees this year after canceling its long-running electric vehicle project, according to a notice the company filed in California. The company also relocated a Siri evaluation team from San Diego, California to Austin, Texas, and some on the 120-person team who were not willing to make the long-distance move were laid off.

Apple also cut around 100 jobs across its Apple Books and Apple News teams this year, and laid off some employees after abandoning its plan to develop in-house Apple Watch displays with micro-LED technology, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

While some other tech companies like Google and Microsoft have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the past two years, Apple has managed to avoid larger-scale layoffs in that time. With its employee count once again at an all-time high, and its quarterly revenues in record territory again, Apple is heading into 2025 on a good note.

Popular Stories

Apple Event Logo

Apple to Release These 15 New Products Later This Year

Friday June 12, 2026 7:45 am PDT by
Apple's annual WWDC developers conference is drawing to a close, but there is still a lot to look forward to in the second half of the year. Apple is expected to release at least 15 more products later this year. Now that the more intelligent and personal version of Siri has finally arrived in beta, a full two years after Apple first previewed it at WWDC 2024, we should begin to see some new ...
iCloud iPhone 17 Pro

iPhone Users Who Pay for iCloud Storage Get Two New Perks on iOS 27

Tuesday June 9, 2026 11:29 am PDT by
If you pay for extra iCloud storage on your iPhone, beyond the 5GB included for free, you might receive two more perks on iOS 27 at no additional cost. First, Apple said there will be daily usage limits for some of the new and enhanced Apple Intelligence features on iOS 27, including image generation. However, the company noted that "increased access" is available with "most" iCloud+ storage ...
Apple Logo Top Half

Have One of These 16 Apple Devices? Software Support Ends This Fall

Saturday June 13, 2026 8:00 am PDT by
Apple will end software support for 16 devices this fall across four product lines, with the Apple Watch seeing the most sweeping cull in the product's history. The full extent of this year's software drops became clear with the announcements of macOS 27 Golden Gate, iPadOS 27, tvOS 27, and watchOS 27 at WWDC this week. The one bright spot is that iOS 27 features identical device support to...

Top Rated Comments

21 months ago
Layoff QA engineers hire more emoji designers! /s
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
21 months ago

I wonder too. I've never worked in tech, or even adjacent to tech.

I have a cousin that is a developer at the spaceship, and he strictly works internal software used at the retail locations. I guess there are all types of positions that don't work on consumer-facing things.
I work in tech, things don’t go as fast as you would expect. But Apple moves sooo slow..

Huawei have 207,000 full time employees, Samsung electronics have 267,800, Xiaomi 32,500 for comparison.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
21 months ago

You think they'd have enough people to figure out how to get the Magic Mouse to charge without flipping it over. 😔
Those people were moved to work on the Mac mini's power button. In the end they were like "F it. Let's be consistent and put it on the bottom like the charging port of the Magic Mouse."
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
coffeemilktea Avatar
21 months ago
You think they'd have enough people to figure out how to get the Magic Mouse to charge without flipping it over. 😔
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
21 months ago
I want to mention that Apple offered other positions to the majority of the people on the car project. And to those who didn't get offered another position, they were given 90 days to apply internally for another role at Apple.

This is much different than a traditional layoff we see happening daily in tech, and is very misleading.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
21 months ago
With 160000 people:
If they stay in average 4 years, Apple needs to higher about 40000 per year in average or about 150 per work day.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)