Vice Media Group to lay off over 150 employees from US, international units
May 16, 2020
Washington D.C. [US], May 16 : Vice Media Group is laying off more than 150 employees from its US and international units, the company said on Friday amid an industrywide slowdown in digital advertising as the world battles the coronavirus pandemic.
The Wall Street Journal reported that in a note to employees on Friday (local time), Vice Chief Executive Nancy Dubuc said the cuts would focus primarily on Vice's digital-media business, which she said represents an outsize portion of its spending relative to its revenue.
The digital organization accounts for about 50 per cent of the company's head-count costs but only generates about 21 per cent of the company's revenue, wrote Dubuc.
"Looking at our business holistically, this imbalance needed to be addressed for the long-term health of our company," she wrote, reported WSJ.
Dubuc wrote that about 55 employees will be cut from Vice's U.S. division, and 100 from international operations.
A Vice spokeswoman didn't respond to a request for comment, the WSJ said in its report.
The Coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on World Economy with countries placing several restrictions on movements.
American private-sector has shed around 20.2 million jobs in April, the worst month on record, as per a report of Automatic Data Processing (ADP) National Employment earlier this month.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that the world economy is likely to contract sharply by "minus three per cent" due to coronavirus pandemic.
According to latest data from Johns Hopkins University, the number of coronavirus cases in US 1,443,188 while the death toll has risen to 87,559.
