Unemployment: Five big companies including Reliance, Titan laid off 52 thousand employees; massive layoffs in retail sector
Due to weak demand amid rising unemployment among youth, five big companies in the retail sector laid off 52,000 employees in 2023-24. According to the latest annual reports of the companies, this number is 17 percent of the combined workforce of the five firms. The companies making layoffs include Reliance Industries’ retail arm Reliance Retail, Tata Group’s Titan, Raymond, Page Industries and Spencer’s. Reliance Retail had the highest share in total layoffs. The company laid off 38,029 people during the last financial year.
According to the annual report of Reliance Industries, the number of employees of Reliance Retail decreased to 2,07,552 in the financial year 2023-24. The company had 2,45,581 employees during 2022-23. Titan’s employee strength is down from 26,104 in 2022-23 to 17,535 in 2023-24. In this way, the company laid off 8,569 people during the last financial year. There has also been a decrease of 4,217 in the number of employees of Page Industries.
The company had 26,781 employees in 2022-23, whose number reduced to 22,564 in 2023-24. On the other hand, Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO of Retailers Association of India, said that in July 2024, a slight growth of 2 percent has been recorded in the sales of retail sector as compared to a year ago.
26,000 layoffs in a dozen listed companies too
A dozen listed lifestyle, grocery retailers and quick service restaurants have cut their workforce by 26,000 in the last financial year. These retailers had a total of 4.55 lakh employees in 2022-23, whose number dropped to 4.29 lakh in 2023-24.
Store expansion lowest in five years CBRE said, retail sector companies expanded stores at a pace of 9 percent, which is the lowest in five years. The retail sector took up 71 lakh square feet of space in the top-8 cities in 2023, which is expected to decline to 60-65 lakh square feet in 2024.
