Meta might be laying off several thousand of its employees this week. The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed sources familiar with the company's plans that an announcement might come as soon as Wednesday. If accurate, these layoffs will be the first large-scale workforce reduction in its 18-year history. Facebook's parent company is reportedly looking to slash its costs by at least 10% within the next few months.
These cost-cutting efforts show how companies, which make money through ads, are looking to rein in spending following the tech industry's rapid growth during the pandemic. Meta currently employs 87,000 people. And its CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted during its third-quarter earnings call that job cuts might be imminent.
"In 2023, we're going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas," Zuckerberg said. "So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year."
"In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today," he said.