Tech giants including X (then known as Twitter) and Facebook owner Meta announced thousands of job cuts globally in 2022 and 2023, as did other firms like entertainment company Disney, consultancy firm KPMG and phone company Vodafone. And let's not forget those making redundancies as a result of company collapses such as UK retailer Wilko. In the UK alone, the number of planned redundancies by companies increased by 54% over the last year, from 153,635 to 237,017.