Uber Freight, which opened a sprawling new headquarters in Chicago 15 months ago, has laid off 150 people.
The layoffs amount to 3% of the freight business’s workforce, the company confirmed.
Uber Freight joins a wave of tech companies announcing layoffs in recent months. In some cases, the layoffs follow hiring surges by tech industry giants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Microsoft said this month it was cutting 10,000 people, or almost 5% of its workforce, though that was fewer people than it added during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon said it would be cutting about 18,000 workers, and Facebook parent Meta said in November it would lay off 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce.
Uber opened new offices in the redeveloped Old Post Office in October 2021, intended to serve as the headquarters for the Uber Freight business and Chicago operations.
The new office was delayed and downsized by the pandemic. The company in 2019 announced it had signed a 10-year lease for 463,000 square feet, but when the office opened the company was occupying about 310,000 square feet of office space and subleasing about 150,000 square feet.
When the Old Post Office space opened, Uber had about 1,500 Chicago office workers, about half employed by Uber Freight. The company planned to expand to more than 2,000 Chicago employees at that time.
sfreishtat@chicagotribune.com
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