I'm also interested in the responses to your questions, but I would ask something else: are non-tech companies also doing layoffs? I'm not in the US so I'm not really up to date to that.
The layoffs are widespread. For example, Dominos just laid off 1,200 drivers.
However discussions about the economy's health become particularly politicaly charged during an election year. So any conversation about the state of the economy, whether it's perceived as good or bad, inevitably carries political implications in this context.
In that link it says they are required to pay all restaurant workers $20 an hour due to new laws. From my understanding that job gets a lot of tips in America so they don't want to cough up $20 an hour.
the idea of having in-house delivery people for any place is outdated compared to gig apps probably. You only lose a bit of money by not having your own people.
labor-dependent enterprises are being whispered unbelievably outrageous things from your regular biz consultants (Bain, pwc, ey, etc) about how much money that could save in labor via AI, so some may be cutting heads to fund their AI transformations? I'm not sure that's entirely it though. Many execs have been warning staff of corp austerity measures for a while to bring costs in line. It does boggle the mind though, as many of these same companies are all hitting record revenues (due to inflation).
My impression is that the tech layoffs are entirely related to Covid overhiring, VC money drying up with high interest rates, greed and wanting to get share prices up, and finally removing useless departments like Elon did with twitter.
I am not seeing any similar layoffs in other industries, some may be slowing down but mine seems normal.
However discussions about the economy's health become particularly politicaly charged during an election year. So any conversation about the state of the economy, whether it's perceived as good or bad, inevitably carries political implications in this context.
Edit: it is not Dominos it is Pizza Hut https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/pizza-hut-drivers-layoff...