Microsoft plans to start mass layoffs, 11,000 people may lose their jobs

Microsoft

Fenghuang.com Technology News Beijing time on January 18th, according to multiple media reports, the software giant Microsoft is preparing to lay off thousands of employees. It is the latest layoff move by global technology giants in the face of a slowing global economy.

Microsoft is likely to announce plans to cut a large number of jobs around the world in the next few days, Sky News reported. Microsoft has more than 220,000 employees, including 6,000 in the UK. Microsoft is said to be considering layoffs of about 5 percent, which would equate to about 11,000 jobs if the news is accurate. As of Tuesday evening local time, Sky News could not confirm the number of layoffs. Wall Street would be surprised if the layoffs were no bigger than that, one analyst said.

According to other media reports, people familiar with the matter revealed that Microsoft plans to lay off employees in various engineering departments on Wednesday. The exact size of the layoffs is unclear, but it will be significantly larger than other layoffs Microsoft has made in the past year. Those previous layoffs affected less than 1% of Microsoft’s more than 200,000 employees.

Recently, Microsoft has carried out layoffs in July and October last year, canceled vacancies in multiple departments, and suspended recruitment. While tech peers such as Amazon.com Inc. , Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Salesforce have announced thousands of layoffs over the past few months, Microsoft has so far taken smaller steps in response to a deteriorating global economic outlook and software and The possibility of a prolonged slowdown in demand for services.

Microsoft will release its fiscal third-quarter earnings next week. If Microsoft’s layoffs are finalized, the company will likely announce them before CEO Satya Nadella briefs investors on the company’s financial results on Jan. 24. Sales are expected to rise 2 percent in the third quarter, which would be the slowest revenue growth since fiscal 2017. Microsoft’s cloud computing business drove a recovery in growth from fiscal 2017 onwards, but even that business has decelerated over the past year.

Microsoft declined to comment. As of Tuesday’s close, Microsoft’s stock price rose 0.47%, and it has fallen by 23% in the past year. (Author/Xiao Yu)

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