Next round of expanded layoffs set to happen at Intel Folsom this month

Editor's note: On July 16, the number of layoffs for the Folsom Intel campus increased to 344, according to updated filings with the state. Initially, it was reported that 54 people would be laid off this month. The next round of impending layoffs at Intel are scheduled to roll out this month, with job cuts set to take effect at Intel's Folsom campus and in Santa Clara, Oregon and more. As of mid July, 344 employees in Folsom are scheduled to be laid off; many more permanent layoffs were slated to take effect July 15 in six locations in the Santa Clara area, according to a report from the SF Chronicle and other media outlets. At the company's Robert Noyce Building in the Bay Area, 184 layoffs are planned, and another 179 job cuts will occur at its facility at Juliette Lane. The company has reportedly made its necessary filings with the California Employment Development Department. Layoff notices have also reportedly been issued in Oregon, Arizona and Texas. The number of layoffs in Oregon is especially high, with 529 Intel employees expected to lose their jobs July 15. A large portion of those layoffs are engineers, according to the company's filings. These sweeping cuts are part of Intel's ongoing effort to reduce costs and streamline its operations. Worldwide, the company is eliminating thousands of positions, including 20 percent of its factory workforce; the company is also abandoning its automotive technology business. As The Folsom Telegraph reported in April, new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan wrote a letter to employees explaining he had aggressive plans which would inevitably call for painful job cuts. "There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce," Tan wrote in the letter. "As I said when I joined, we need to make some very hard decisions to put our company on a solid footing for the future. This will begin in Q2 and we will move as quickly as possible over the next several months." The Folsom location has faced a significant reduction in its job force over the past several years, with the total number of layoffs at about 1,117 since January 2023, not including the upcoming layoffs. In August 2024, the company announced it would reduce its workforce by 15 percent, which translated to about 15,000 layoffs company-wide. Late last year, Intel also announced it was selling its Folsom campus and leasing back space it needs in an effort to further reduce costs. Media outlets from Oregon obtained a transcript of an internal meeting Tan had with his employees in May, in which he acknowledged the company, which was once a leader in semiconductors, has now fallen drastically behind and has not evolved with the times.