Layoffs in the technology sector accelerated this month as Cisco (NASDAQ: CSC) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) announced that it would lay off a total of almost 21,000 employees.

On August 14, Cisco announced a restructuring plan that would reduce its global workforce by 7%. revealed in a SEC Filing.

The plan will enable Cisco to “invest in key growth opportunities and increase the efficiency of its business.”

This will cost the company up to $1 billion in severance and compensation, as well as other costs. Cisco expects $700 million to $800 million of these costs to be incurred in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, with the rest spread throughout the year. At least 5,500 employees are expected to be affected.

This is the second massive wave of layoffs the San Jose, California-based tech giant has announced this year. On February 14, it announced in another SEC filing that it would lay off 5%, or around 4,000 employees, “to realign the organization and enable further investment in key focus areas.” Those layoffs cost $800 million.

On August 1, Intel announced that it would reduce its workforce of 110,000 employees by 15%, or approximately 15,000 employees.

“Simply put, we need to align our cost structure with our new operating model and fundamentally change the way we work,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a note to employees. “Our revenues have not grown as expected – and we are not yet fully benefiting from strong trends like AI. Our costs are too high, our margins too low. We need to take bolder actions to address both – especially given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which are more challenging than previously expected.”

In addition, German chipmaker Infineon (OTCQX:IFNNY) announced on August 5 that it would cut 1,400 jobs worldwide.

“The recovery in our target markets is progressing only slowly,” said Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck. “The persistently weak economic momentum has led to inventories exceeding final demand in many places.”

According to tracker Layoffs.fyi, nearly 400 tech companies have laid off a total of 130,482 employees so far in 2024. At that rate, the layoffs are expected to surpass the 165,269 job cuts in the industry in 2022. However, they are unlikely to surpass the total of 264,220 jobs cut in all of 2023.

In 2024, layoffs primarily affected employees of hardware companies.

For example, the tracker found only 3,605 layoffs in hardware companies in 2022. For the whole of 2023, layoffs in hardware companies totaled 24,459. But less than eight full months into 2024, the sector has already recorded 24,706 layoffs.