Exxon to Cut 14,000 From Global Workforce Due to Oil Slump

Date: 30 October 2020 - 21:48

News ID: ۸۴۳۰۶

NEW YORK (Bloomberg) - Exxon Mobil Corp. will slash its global workforce by 15% by the end of 2022, an unprecedented culling by North America’s biggest oil explorer as it struggles to preserve dividends.
The cuts will include 1,900 U.S. jobs, mostly in Houston, as well as layoffs previously announced in Europe and Australia and reductions the number of contractors, some of which have already taken place. Personnel reductions are Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods’s latest effort to curtail spending and halt the worst string of quarterly losses since Exxon assumed its modern form with the 1999 takeover of Mobil Corp.
"These actions will improve the company’s long-term cost competitiveness and ensure the company manages through the current unprecedented market conditions,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Exxon rose 3.7% to $32.73 at 1:47 p.m. in New York and was the day’s best-performing exploration stock in the S&P 500 Index.
Exxon’s total reduction means the company will reduce its workforce by about 14,000 people, split between employees and contractors, from year-end 2019 levels, spokesman Casey Norton said by email. The cuts will come through attrition, targeted redundancy programs in 2021, and scaled-back hiring in some countries.
Exxon’s Big Oil rivals are also cutting thousands of jobs in response to the pandemic-induced demand slump. BP Plc plans to slash 10,000 jobs, Royal Dutch Shell Plc will cut as many as 9,000 roles and Chevron Corp. has announced around 6,000 reductions.
Exxon’s workforce stood at about 88,000 people, including 75,000 in-house employees and the rest comprised of contractors, as of year-end 2019, Norton said.