People Inc,, formerly known as Dotdash Meredith, will be cutting its workforce by 226, 6% of the total.
Its Thursday, Oct. 9, announcement indicated that most of the cuts will occur at the company’s New York offices but that there also will be layoffs at its offices in Des Moines; Birmingham, Alabama; Chicago; Stamford, Connecticut; Seattle; and Los Angeles. Some employees who work remotely also will be let go.
The company did not disclose how many would be cut at each location, including Des Moines, and a layoff notice had not been posted on the Iowa Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, site as of Thursday morning.
In a memo to employees, People CEO Neil Vogel wrote, “Today’s actions are a difficult but necessary step as we continue to evolve our business and prioritize investments that will help us continue to thrive in today’s media environment. While days like these are tough, we are confident in People Inc.’s future and focused on our plans.”
People has a total workforce of 3,600. The most recent listing available from the Des Moines Partnership, dating from 2024, said the company at that time had 697 employees in Des Moines. That was down after several rounds of layoffs from about 870 in 2021, when the company that became People formed with the $2.7 billion acquisition of Des Moines-based magazine publisher Meredith Corp. by IAC/Interactive, which merged Meredith with its Dotdash digital content company.
The resulting New York-based company, Dotdash Meredith, announced at the end of July that it would become People Inc., a name deriving from the magazine that is a flagship brand among the company’s titles.
In his Thursday memo to employees, Vogel noted that the company was “aggressively investing in new ways to connect directly with our users and directly with our advertisers and partners including a number of high-profile projects that we have launched or are in the pipeline.”
He said implementing the new initiatives “requires many new skills to take advantage of new opportunities” and noted that the company has hired 320 new employees over the past year and is seeking to fill another 40 positions that “will infuse new expertise and capabilities across our brands and teams.”
The memo also said People’s human resources department will meet with each affected employee to provide support.
The stock price of IAC, People’s parent company, dipped by about 13% following its second quarter earnings report, as it disclosed $586.9 million in total revenue compared to its projection of $601.4 million.
Overall, IAC’s stock price is down by 22% from October 2024, according to the website Adexchanger. It was trading at $33.40 early Thursday, up 0.21%.
The company in 2022 gave up an Iowa incentive package that required it to expand its Des Moines workforce. Also in 2022, it sold one of the buildings on its downtown Des Moines campus to MidAmerican Energy, which has moved its headquarters there.
More recently, People acknowledged it had sold the landmark “Plantoir,” a sculpture of a giant trowel on its campus, to an unnamed out-of-state buyer. It was removed last month.
Kevin Baskins covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at kbaskins@registermedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: People Inc. announces more layoffs, does not say how many jobs will be lost in Des Moines
Reporting by Kevin Baskins, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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