Ernst&Young cuts thousand jobs

EY is cutting about three thousand jobs in the United States, about five percent of the total workforce at the US member firm. According to the Financial Times, it is mainly about consultancy positions, due to “overcapacity”.

The news about the layoffs was recently announced by the US top of EY, after stopping the split plans of Project Everest. In a memo to the US partners, us managing partner Julie Boland spoke of” governance reforms “and a” simplification agenda ” that has been held up because of Project Everest. The goal is to save at least five hundred million dollars in costs in the coming year.

A spokesman for EY told the FT that the wave of layoffs was not a result of the “recently concluded strategic review, known as Project Everest,” but stemmed from the organization’s “regular management.”

“After assessing the impact of current economic conditions, the importance of employee retention and overcapacity in parts of our company, we have made the difficult decision to lay off approximately three thousand U.S. employees,” the spokesperson told The Financial Times.

In the consulting practice in particular, things are going less well than a year ago, according to the business newspaper. The rapid growth in IT services due to the corona pandemic is largely behind us. Other organizations are therefore also cutting into the consultancy branch, but at EY the intervention is firmer.

After strong growth around the pandemic, the large offices are now recruiting clearly fewer people, according to the FT, according to a recent survey by William Blair. The big four had more than sixty percent fewer vacancies than a year earlier.