Pampers maker Procter & Gamble to cut up to 7,000 jobs as companies are buffeted by higher costs
Pampers maker Procter & Gamble to cut up to 7,000 jobs as companies are buffeted by higher costs
Procter & Gamble will cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years as the maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers implements a restructuring program at a time when tariffs are raising costs for American companies and consumers are growing anxious about the economy.
The job cuts, announced at the Deutsche Bank Consumer Conference in Paris on Thursday, make up approximately 6% of the company’s global workforce, or about 15% of its nonmanufacturing positions, said Chief Financial Officer Andre Schulten.
“This restructuring program is an important step toward ensuring our ability to deliver our long-term algorithm over the coming two to three years,” Schulten said. “It does not, however, remove the near-term challenges that we currently face.”
Procter & Gamble, based in Cincinnati, had approximately 108,000 employees worldwide in June 2024.
The cuts are part of a broader restructuring program. Procter & Gamble will also end sales of some of its products in certain markets. Procter & Gamble said it will provide more details about that in July.
Like many companies, Procter & Gamble is dealing with American consumers who are worrying about their spending as they keep an eye on inflation.
U.S. consumer sentiment fell slightly in May for the fifth straight month, surprising economists. The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan’s closely watched consumer sentiment index declined 2.7% on a monthly basis to 50.8, the second-lowest level in the nearly 75-year history of the survey. The only lower reading was in June 2022. Since January, sentiment has tumbled nearly 30%.
And on Wednesday the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis that said that President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan would cut deficits by $2.8 trillion over a 10-year period while shrinking the economy, raising the inflation rate and reducing the purchasing power of households overall.
Baked into the CBO analysis is a prediction that households would ultimately buy less from countries hit with added tariffs. The budget office estimates that the tariffs would increase the average annual rate of inflation by 0.4 percentage points in 2025 and 2026.
In April Procter & Gamble noted during a conference call that the biggest U.S. tariff impacts were coming from raw and packaging materials and some finished product sourced from China. The company said that it would be looking at sourcing options and productivity improvements to mitigate the tariff impact, but that it may also have to raise prices on some products.
That same month, the Consumer Brands Association, which represents big food companies like Coca-Cola and General Mills as well as consumer product makers like Procter & Gamble, warned that although its businesses make most of their goods in the U.S., they now face tariffs on critical ingredients — like wood pulp for toilet paper or cinnamon — that must be imported because of domestic scarcity.
By MICHELLE CHAPMAN
AP Business Writer
