In its second round of layoffs, ride-hailing company Lyft plans to slash 13% of its workforce.
“We just sent an invitation for everyone to join us for an all-hands at 11:00 am PT to share some tough news. Despite efforts to avoid this day, we’ve made the difficult decision to lay off 13% of the team,” said Lyft CEO Logan Green and President John Zimmer in a company email.
“Additionally, we are pursuing a divestiture (sale) of our first-party vehicle service business, and in that case we do expect most of those team members will be offered roles from the acquiring company.”
The layoffs come nearly five months after the company let go of 60 employees after deciding to shut down its rental car division. Before that, Lyft laid off roughly 1,000 employees during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020.
The latest round of layoffs is part of the company’s effort to streamline its workforce in preparation for a looming recession and the rise of ride-share insurance costs, the company said.
“We worked hard to bring down costs this summer: we slowed, then froze hiring; cut spending; and paused less-critical initiatives. Still, Lyft has to become leaner, which requires us to part with incredible team members,” Green and Zimmer said.
Green and Zimmer added that the layoffs would impact every part of the organization and were based on deprioritized initiatives, an effort to reduce management layers, savings goals, and performance trajectory.
To date, Lyft has more than 4,000 employees, not including its drivers.
