That would only explain drops in future investments, but we're seeing profitable companies with astronomical revenues from their cash cows diving into a massive firing spiral.
More importantly, growing interest rates is not exactly the definition of a downturn.
I don't think this is true at all. Central banks hike interest rates to limit and reign in inflation. It's the exact opposite of what you claimed.
That does not sound factual at all. Where did you picked that up? According to Variety, Alphabet's revenue on Q4 2022 was $76.05 billion and up 1% in spite of a 8% ad revenue drop.
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/alphabet-google-q4-202...
Are 1% increases in a massive revenue of $76.05 billion now passed off as bad results?
Honest mistake. Happens to the best of us.
Still, regarding profit, I'm not sure that firing people in profitable companies effectively contributes to higher profits. Sure, you pay fewer salaries. However, that comes at a cost, such as supposedly cutting programs the company deemed valuable and eroding the company's ability to conduct their business.
Also, it seems Google's reaction to drops in profit was to fire 6% of their staff. Does that even register in Google's accounting? I mean, payroll is typically 20-30% of a healthy company's expenditure.
And would a hiring freeze not reach the same goal without causing any disruption? I mean, apparently Google is still hiring and has a large volume of job openings. If the amount of people in their payroll is too much as is then why are they hiring even more?
What downturn?
I understand Amazon is reporting poor results, but they seem to be mostly due to reporting losses from past investments that didn't panned out yet, like Rivian.
But it's not like each and every tech turn in the world has invested in Rivian.