Inflation Takes a Bite Out of Apple’s Hiring Plans

Apple is reportedly joining the tanks of tech giants that are seemingly curbing their hiring efforts, although the tech giant said a hiring freeze isn’t part of a companywide policy.

Instead, the company will be putting the policy in place in different sectors based on sales, supply chain issues and consumer demand, Seeking Alpha reported Monday (July 18).

The changes won’t affect every Apple team, per the report, and the company still intends to have a broad set of new products throughout 2023. It also said it won’t fill certain open positions, instead judging such situations on a “case-by-case” basis.

If Apple does end up hiring in a slower rate, it would be joining fellow tech giants Google and Microsoft, which have also said recently that they’ll be changing their plans, with Google planning to slow hiring and Microsoft cutting a small number of jobs.

Microsoft President Brad Smith also recently said U.S. companies were in a new era of hiring, with “significantly fewer” people entering the job market. There will likely be higher salaries at many companies to try and get more workers to come onboard in the midst of ongoing inflation.

According to the report, Apple will report its fiscal third-quarter results on July 28, with predictions from analysts saying the company will turn in a profit of $1.15 a share on around $83 billion in revenue.

In other news related to Apple, the tech giant recently put out a new initiative to help fight things like mercenary spyware and other digital threats.

Read more: Apple to Offer ‘Lockdown Mode’ Against Spyware

PYMNTS, quoting a company blog post, said one tool will be called Lockdown Mode, which is an optional offering to protect specific users facing “grave, targeted” threats. It will help those who are in a unique kind of danger because of who they are or what they do, the report said.

The idea of the tool would be to put a block on most messages, disable various web technology, block many Apple services like invitations and service requests, and generally limit functions so the attack surface is more limited.