Meta to layoff ‘thousands’ of workers within a week, reports say

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is planning to lay off thousands of workers as soon as this week, Bloomberg was the first to report.

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The company already cut 11,000 workers or about 13% of its workforce in November, the news outlet reported.

The news comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February dubbed 2023 as the “Year of Efficiency,” which would result in “cutting projects that aren’t performing or may no longer be crucial.” He also planned on “removing layers of middle management to make decisions faster,” CNBC reported.

Advertising has slowed for the social media giant as it has shifted to focus on what it calls the metaverse, a virtual-reality platform, Bloomberg reported.

The division in charge of building the metaverse, Reality Labs, brought in $727 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, but had a $4.28 billion operating loss, according to CNBC.

An exact timeframe has not been released, but those working on slashing the workforce said they expect to have the list of employees who could be cut ready before Zuckerberg goes on parental leave for the birth of his third child, which is expected to be soon, according to Bloomberg.

In the past, Zuckerberg had said that he would “take accountability” for the plans to cut costs and that layoffs were “a last resort,” CNBC reported.

“We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency,” Zuckerberg said last fall, according to CNBC. “But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go.”

Meta is the latest company to announce layoffs, which have been hitting tech companies hard.

Amazon laid off about 18,000 people in January and shelved plans to build the second phase of its HQ2 headquarters in Northern Virginia, The Associated Press reported.

Salesforce laid off 8,000 employees that same month, accounting for 10% of its workforce at the time, according to the AP.

Yahoo announced it was going to decrease its workforce by 20% by the end of the year, including 1,000 people in February, ABC News reported.

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, announced it would cut about 12,000 jobs in January, the outlet said.

Finally, Twitter and owner Elon Musk cut the workforce from about 7,500 people to about 2,000, The New York Times reported last month.