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.

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Top Rated Comments

Stromos Avatar
24 weeks ago
Layoff QA engineers hire more emoji designers! /s
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CrysisDeu Avatar
24 weeks 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
24 weeks 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)
Schmitti81 Avatar
24 weeks 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)
MacTwick Avatar
24 weeks 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)
coffeemilktea Avatar
24 weeks 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)