Best Buy (BBY) has recently doubled down on reassessing its business operations after facing weak consumer demand in stores over the past few years.
While Best Buy revealed in its second-quarter earnings report for 2025 that comparable sales increased by 1.6% year-over-year (its highest growth in three years), categories such as home theater, appliances, tablets, and drones faced a drop in sales.
In addition, foot traffic at Best Buy’s same-store locations decreased by 1.2% year-over-year during the quarter, according to recent data from Placer.ai.
The change in customer behavior comes after Best Buy raised prices in its stores earlier this year to help mitigate the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
During an earnings call last month, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry emphasized that customers “continue to be thoughtful about big-ticket purchases” as they battle economic challenges such as inflation and a “depressed” housing market.
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Best Buy sends a harsh message to employees
Amid Best Buy’s struggles with consumer demand, impacting sales in several electronic categories, the retailer has decided to give a vital group of employees the boot.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, Best Buy has been shrinking its workforce, which has recently affected Geek Squad employees. These employees provide customers with tech support, repair services, device setup, and other services for electronics and appliances.
A Best Buy spokesperson told Bloomberg the company is laying off employees in its customer care and in-home field teams. This will impact a small number of workers, who will receive severance to lessen the blow.
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The last time Best Buy Geek Squad employees faced job cuts was last year as part of a mass restructuring.
The retailer’s most recent round of layoffs also comes after it partnered with Google Cloud and Accenture during the summer last year to personalize and remove friction from the customer experience by using artificial intelligence.
This involved launching a self-service option for customers, powered by an AI virtual assistant, that will help troubleshoot product issues, manage deliveries, handle software and more.
Customer service employees who assisted customers over the phone were even equipped with AI tools to help analyze conversations in real-time, allowing them to offer relevant recommendations.
Best Buy follows a startling workforce trend in tech
Best Buy’s layoffs mirror a budding trend in the tech industry. According to recent data from Layoffs.fyi., 204 tech companies have so far conducted job cuts this year, resulting in over 89,900 tech employees losing their jobs.
The grim reality is that layoffs across the country are expected to continue over the next few months. A new survey from Resume.org found that 6 in 10 companies plan to lay off employees next year, and high-salary employees and those lacking skills in artificial intelligence will be impacted the most.
More Labor:
- Intel quietly pulls back major employee commitment amid troubles
- Google quietly doubles down on a controversial workplace trend
- Samsung cracks down on an alarming workplace problem
It also found that 4 in 10 companies plan to replace workers with AI by 2026.
“AI adoption is going to reshape the job market more dramatically over the next 18 to 24 months than we’ve seen in decades,” said Kara Dennison, head of career advising at Resume.org, in the survey. “We’ll see continued displacement of routine and process-driven roles as well as entirely new categories of work centered on AI oversight, data ethics, prompt engineering, and human-AI collaboration. Technical skills alone won’t be enough; adaptability, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence will become the defining differentiators for talent.
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