Another new year, and another layoff season at AOL/Oath/Yahoo/Verizon Media. This time around, Verizon ($VZ) plans to lay off around 150 people from its media group this week. Last January, Verizon Media kicked off 2019 by laying off around 800 people.

The layoffs come in the shadows of a rapid hiring slowdown at Verizon Media.

As of this week, Verizon Media lists 439 openings on its careers site — its lowest levels for over a year since it began using this particular hiring platform, and a massive decrease of 53% from a summer 2018 high of 932 openings.

At this time last year, Verizon Media listed around 600 openings, signaling a decrease YoY of 26%.

According to CNN, this week's layoffs amount to 1.4% of Verizon Media's workforce of 10,500 people. Overall, Verizon employs close to 150,000 people, and in the past year has actually grown overall as a company.

In the last year alone, Verizon picked up around 11,000 employees according to LinkedIn profile data. including January's 800 layoffs and this week's 150, Verizon Media has lost close to 1,000 employees in the meantime via layoffs and attrition.

It's unclear what Verizon's plans are for its media division as it continues to lean up the operation and focus on generating revenue via advertising and premium subscriptions. So far, top brass has denied any plans to sell off any of its media brands, which include Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, and Engadget.

"Our goal is to create the best experiences for our consumers and the best platforms for our customers. Today we are investing in premium content, connections, and commerce experiences that connect people to their passions and continue to align our resources to opportunities where we feel we can differentiate ourselves and scale faster," a spokesperson said in a statement.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

Ad placeholder