[The Epoch Times, December 20, 2022](Comprehensive report by Epoch Times reporter Chen Ting) Recently, it has been rumored that the Chinese mobile phone giant “Xiaomi” will have another wave of layoffs at the end of the year. Sources said the layoffs could be as high as 15%. Xiaomi said on Tuesday (December 20) that this wave of layoffs is “personnel optimization at the end of the year”, and said that the actual number of people affected is less than 10% of the total.
According to a South China Morning Post report on Tuesday (December 20), Xiaomi is citing “staff optimization” as an excuse to lay off staff in various departments, and various social media in China have been flooded with posts about layoffs.
The report quoted Jiemian News from an interview with Xiaomi’s employees in various departments, saying that Xiaomi’s mobile phone department, Internet department, China department and other departments have all been laid off, but the degree of layoffs varies between departments. Among them, the proportion of layoffs in individual departments in China is as high as 75%, and the Internet Department also has a team layoff of 40%. Sources estimate that layoffs may be as high as 15% of the overall workforce.
According to Xiaomi’s financial report, as of September 30, Xiaomi had 35,314 employees, of which more than 32,609 were in China. As a result, the latest move could affect thousands of employees, many of whom were newcomers to the company during a December hiring spree.
Xiaomi said in a statement that the recent implementation is the normal year-end personnel optimization and organization streamlining, the actual number of optimized personnel is less than 10% of the overall number, and the compensation plan for these personnel also complies with labor law requirements.
The South China Morning Post pointed out that layoffs in Chinese companies are usually carried out in the name of “business optimization” to avoid scrutiny from the labor department. According to Chinese labor law, layoffs affecting more than 20 positions must be submitted to the government for review.
Xiaomi is the fifth-largest smartphone vendor in China, with a market share of about 13 percent in the third quarter.
According to Xiaomi’s third-quarter financial report released in November, revenue fell by 9.7% to RMB 70.47 billion (approximately US$10.1 billion), while net profit fell by 59.1% to 2.21 billion yuan (about 3.17 U.S. dollars).
Smartphone revenue, which accounts for about 60 percent of total sales, fell 11 percent year-on-year, Xiaomi said.
Responsible Editor: Ye Ziwei#