Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will reportedly cut 11,000 jobs from this week, following fellow tech firms Twitter, Meta Platforms and Amazon in reducing its workforce.
It will lay off staff in its engineering and human resources divisions, according to reports from Sky News and Bloomberg, amounting to 5% of its total employees.
Some 1,000 jobs were cut in October, after Microsoft hinted a “small number” of roles were subject to the same fate earlier in the year.
Sackings have become an increasingly common feature within the tech sector in recent months, with Amazon cutting 18,000 jobs in early January, following 10,000 redundancies it made last November.
Facebook owner Meta also axed 11,000 staff in November, a sign of over-investment made during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to owner Mark Zuckerberg.
Twitter, meanwhile, saw thousands of staff cut as part of new owner Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” shake-up.
Further rounds of job cuts suggest the situation is not yet easing for tech firms, which have been forced to refocus on high-growth areas amid the global economic downturn.
“Another pending round of layoffs at Microsoft suggests the environment is not improving, and likely continues to worsen,” commented Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff.
So far this year, 26,000 tech sector workers from 104 companies globally have lost jobs, according to Layoffs.fyi, following 150,000 sackings made across the sector last year.