The American tech giant Intel has announced that it is to shed 12,000 jobs from its workforce of 100,000.
It is not yet known how, or if, Intel's Irish operations will be affected. A spokesperson for Intel in Ireland said it was too early to say whether or not Irish employees will be part of the planned cuts, as no site specific information has been released yet. It will be another 60 days before that information will made available.
Intel will be restructuring to cut about 11% of its workforce by mid-2017. According to a statement from the company, the cuts are aimed to "accelerate evolution from a PC company to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices."
Intel currently employs around 5,500 people in Ireland. 4,500 of those are at its manufacturing campus in Leixlip; the remainder work for Intel's security business in Cork or the research and development labs located in Shannon. Two years ago, Intel announced it was spending $5bn upgrading its Leixlip operation. That work has been completed, and the plant is producing 14 nanometer chip technology.