Facebook Parent Meta Planning New Job Cuts, Says Report

Last updated on March 13th, 2023 at 07:12 am

The parent company of Facebook, Meta Platforms, is planning to announce additional job cuts in multiple rounds over the next few months, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The new layoffs in total would likely be roughly of the same magnitude as the 13% cut to the workforce last year, people familiar with the matter mentioned.

In a shocking move, Meta laid off nearly 11,000 employees in 2022. This year, the first of the latest job losses are expected to be announced in the coming week, with non-engineering roles likely to be hit hard, the report said. Some projects and teams might even get shot down. But the final count of the cumulative cuts expected over the second quarter isn’t yet clear.

Following the WSJ report on the planned cuts, Meta’s shares rose by over 2% in after-hours trading.

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Some wearable devices that were in the works at Reality Labs, Meta’s hardware and metaverse division, are counted among the projects likely to be shut down, the people said, suggesting a near-term retreat from efforts to popularise virtual and augmented reality products even as longer-term research efforts continue, the report added.

2023 would be a “year of efficiency” at the company, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had previously mentioned, adding that some projects would likely get shut down. The additional layoffs are even more noteworthy given the billionaire’s prediction in October that the company would end the current year with roughly as many employees as it had at that time.

Tech giants including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have cut thousands of jobs this year and last year as well as profits retreat from Covid-induced highs. According to Layoffs.fyi, a website involved in tracking job cuts in the industry, layoff tallies have released roughly 300,000 workers since 2022.

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