PepsiCo announced today that there will be hundreds of staff that will be laid off. The decision was reached due to the company making changes to more tech and media focused operations in an effort to making the company more efficient. The specific businesses that are effected of the company are the North America beverage business and the North America snacks and packaged-food business. PepsiCo is also doing this in an effort to improve profit margins. The increase in inflation rates has meant PepsiCo has had to increase their price of selling to customers. This has shown to be not enough for profit margins so the worker cuts were inevitable.
This decision to lay off workers is similar to what other large companies have done such as Walmart Inc. and Ford Motor Co. They are also laying off white-collar staff specifically in order to retain as many front-line workers as possible. Within the last week, CNN and H&M delivered a “gut punch” to their respective companies, laying off many workers. It seems that with the combination of increased inflation rates, and tasks becoming more easily completed with technology, less and less staff are needed so we shouldn’t expect layoffs of these big companies to stop any time soon.