US e-commerce firm Etsy to cut 11% of its workforce

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - US e-commerce firm Etsy announced Wednesday that it will cut 11% of its workforce, or around 225 employees.

"We are operating in a very challenging macro and competitive environment," CEO Josh Silverman said in a letter to employees released on the firm's website.

"This means we are not bringing our sellers more sales, which is the single most important thing we can do for them.

"At the same time, employee expenses have grown, even as we have introduced significant cost-cutting measures and adjusted or paused hiring plans. This is ultimately not a sustainable trajectory and we must change it," he added.

Silverman noted that employees to be affected by the decision will receive severance of 16 weeks of base pay, in addition to one week for each full year of service.

Etsy's stock price fell 2.16% on the Nasdaq to close at $83.97 per share Wednesday, after hitting as low as $78.54 a share during the session.

Dozens of companies in the technology sector have been cutting jobs as they struggle with lower income and falling advertisement revenue.

Spotify, Grubhub, Uber, Reddit, Disney, 3M, Amazon, Yahoo, Affirm, Zoom, Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, PayPal and Google's parent company, Alphabet, have laid off workers by the thousands since the last quarter of the past year.