Facebook parent Meta is set to make major layoffs this week impacting thousands of employees as it grapples with a significant downturn in its business, according to a report Monday.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking giant is planning to start notifying impacted workers of their fates this week, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter. The job cuts could be announced as soon as this week.
The report said the pink slips could number in the “many thousands” and potentially comprise the “largest round” of cuts conducted by any major tech firm during a recent wave of layoffs.
Meta had more than 87,000 employees globally as of the end of its last quarter in September.
The looming bloodbath could also constitute the most extensive reduction of headcount in Meta’s history, according to the report.
The layoffs are expected during one of the worst slumps in Meta’s history. Shares of the company are down more than 70% since January as Meta pours billions of dollars into building a poorly received metaverse platform. Meanwhile, ad revenue has plummeted and the user base of Meta’s core social media platforms has stagnated.
A Meta spokesperson declined the Wall Street Journal’s request for comment and pointed to recent remarks by Zuckerberg, who said the company would “focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas.”
“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year,” Zuckerberg said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call last month. “In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
