Four hundred fifteen people in mainly high-paying, six-figure jobs will be gone from Qualcomm by mid-July. That’s out of nearly 13,000 employees at company headquarters here in San Diego.
KPBS asked University of San Diego economics professor Alan Gin to characterize how those losses will impact San Diego's overall economy.
“This will be a hit, but it’s not going to be a large hit. You hate to see people lose their jobs, but again, in terms of the overall economy, this one situation is not going to have a big impact," Gin said.
The layoffs won’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows financial news. Qualcomm reported sales of chips that are used in smartphones were down 17% from last year. The company’s net income fell 42% in the first quarter of this year.
Gin said the pandemic gets a lot of the blame.
“Technology companies just expanded rapidly to take advantage of the fact that people were doing things online, they needed electronic gadgets and so on. And they might have overhired," he said.
The layoffs are happening against the backdrop of a fairly robust economy in San Diego County.
“Our unemployment rate is 3.7%. That’s really low and we’re adding jobs at a pretty healthy pace," Gin said.
But Gin also said the Qualcomm news provides a note of caution.
“The worry is that we’re seeing layoffs in other companies as well. But right now job growth is strong, the unemployment rate is low. So hopefully those people are able to find employment elsewhere," he said.
Those people, along with 80 from Qualcomm’s Bay Area operations are losing their jobs as well. A sour economic note one hopes doesn’t become a harbinger.
