A New Round of Surprising Layoffs Is Now Hitting Colorado

May 23, 2024

A new round of surprising layoffs in now hitting Colorado as another business warns of another batch of upcoming job cuts.

Denver-based Guild, an online worker training platform, told their employees on Wednesday a quarter of them would lose their job.

The company didn’t specify the number of workers being laid off when asked, reports The Denver Post.

However, based on an estimated headcount of 1,200 employees, about 300 people may have lost their jobs.

The latest round of layoffs comes a year after the company let go of 172 workers or about 12% of its workforce of more than 1,400 people.

At the time, about half of its workforce was based in Colorado.

CEO Bijal Shah released the following statement on Wednesday:

“As Guild’s business continues to grow, we must ensure that we deliver on our mission as efficiently and effectively as possible.

To exceed our audacious goals, we shared with employees today that we have decided to restructure our organization.

This restructuring resulted in a reduction in our workforce.”

Shah said the restructuring would allow the company to “operate more efficiently, innovate faster, and continue to deliver strong outcomes for our stakeholders.”

Workers are being offered several months of severance, support to transition careers and a window of time to exercise their equity in the company.

Guild offers about 2,000 courses on its platform and counts several large corporations as clients, including Walmart, Target, Taco Bell and Chipotle.

The training ranges from career coaches to “upskill” modules that help workers earn a promotion to college-level courses.

Guild was cofounded in 2015 by Rachel Romer, the granddaughter of former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and daughter of Chris Romer.

She built the company to a $4.4 billion value, making it one of Colorado’s ‘tech unicorns’.

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Other Economy News Today

Applications for unemployment benefits now surge to new highs, a sign that the white-hot labor market is starting to cool off.

First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to 231,000, the highest level since August, per CNN.

Thursday’s data also showed that the number of continuing claims, or applications from people who have filed for unemployment for at least one week, was 1.78 million.

That’s an increase of 17,000 from the prior week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The latest numbers come less than a week after the monthly jobs report showed the US economy added just 175,000 positions in April, less than economists expected and a steep drop-off from prior months.

US employers have now added an average of 245,500 jobs per month, versus 2023’s 251,000-per-month average.

Still, hiring remains strong. Although the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% last month, it’s the 27th consecutive month that the jobless rate has held under 4%, matching a streak last seen in the late 1960s.

Weekly jobless claims data tends to be volatile but, while one week’s worth of data “does not a trend make,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.

“We can no longer be sure that calm seas lie ahead for the US economy if today’s weekly jobless claims are any indication.”

“Company layoffs are picking up, hinting at caution on the part of companies as they weigh the outlook for the second half of the year,” he wrote in a note Thursday.

The Federal Reserve has been battling inflation by raising its key lending rate in the hopes of slowing the economy.

While the labor market has so far resisted those efforts, remaining white hot for the past 18 months despite 11 rate hikes from the central bank, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that demand has “cooled from its extremely high level of a couple of years ago.”

Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Economics said in a note Thursday: “We’d need to see at least a month of elevated readings to convince us that the trend really has turned.”

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Also Read: A Giant Company Now Announces Unexpected Layoffs in Virginia

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