Dell Technologies has announced it will cut 5% of its global workforce. 

It is not yet known how many of the roughly 5,000 people the company employs in Ireland will be affected. 

Dell's co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in a memo to staff that the company is facing “an uncertain future" due to market conditions. 

Tech companies across the world are laying off workers as the global economy slows and their stock market valuations have tumbled; last week, Salesforce announced that 200 of their staff in Ireland would lose their jobs as they looked to reduce costs. 

DELL TECHNOLOGIES brand at company's pavilion during the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona,. Credit: Jordi Boixareu/Alamy Live News

Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney is due to head to the US West Coast to meet tech bosses and has warned that Ireland is not “immune” to the turbulence in the sector.

“The impact on Ireland so far of tech sector announcements isn’t anything like the impact on some other countries and other parts of the world,” Minister Coveney said. 

“But it will impact on some people and the State will be there to support those people. We have a very strong economy at the moment and a very strong tech sector.

“Unlike many other countries across the European Union and across the world, in the context of the headwinds that we faced last year around increased costs, dramatic disruptions to supply chains and so on, Irish companies and multinationals here in Ireland have performed remarkably strongly. 

“But we’re not going to be immune from the consequences of some of the global decisions that are being made in boardrooms, particularly in the US, in terms of global businesses.”

According to the CSO, 90,766 people in Ireland were employed in information and communications technology in 2019.