Apple is sacking a number of workers in its corporate retail teams, after so far avoiding the mass layoffs that have plagued its Silicon Valley rivals.

The company is cutting jobs in its ‘development and preservation teams’, which are responsible for the construction and maintenance of Apple retail stores and physical outlets around the world.

It is not known how many job cuts this will total. Apple had 164,000 employees as of the start of the financial year, and Bloomberg are reporting the number of job losses are “likely very small.”

Apple has avoided the mass staff purges seen at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, mostly because its employee growth remained steady throughout the pandemic.