IT sector giant Accenture is going to lay off employees. The company has announced to lay off 2.5% i.e. 19 thousand employees from its total workforce on Friday (March 23).

Accenture attributed the layoffs to the deteriorating global economic outlook. Along with this, Accenture has also reduced its revenue and profit forecast.

Accenture has lowered its annual growth rate forecast from 8% to 11% to 8% to 10%. With this, the company now expects earnings per share to be in the range of $10.84 to $11.06, which was earlier estimated to be $11.20 to $11.52.

Making layoffs to cut costs: CEO Julie Sweet

Accenture said, "We expect revenue in the third quarter of fiscal year 2023 to be between $16.1 billion and $16.7 billion." At the same time, the company's CEO Julie Sweet said that we are taking these retrenchment steps to reduce our costs. However, we will continue to take advantage of significant growth opportunities by continuing to invest in the business and our people.

Step-by-step employees will be retrenched in 18 months

Accenture told that the company will not do this retrenchment of employees at once, but step-by-step over 18 months. According to the company, the effect of this retrenchment will be more on the employee involved in its non-bailable corporate function.

Big companies are doing layoffs due to fear of economic recession

Accenture has announced layoffs at a time when companies around the world are laying off employees due to fears of an economic downturn. Big companies like Meta, Google and Amazon have also laid off employees. Meanwhile, experts have claimed that this process of retrenchment will continue till at least the first quarter of 2023.