Reports from the media on Tuesday said that Microsoft Corp. wants to get rid of thousands of jobs. Some of these jobs are likely to be in the human resources and engineering departments.
The expected layoffs would be the latest in the U.S. technology sector, where companies like Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) have announced layoffs in response to slowing demand and a worsening global economic outlook.
The move by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) could be a sign that the tech industry could continue to lose jobs.
“From a big-picture point of view, another round of layoffs at Microsoft shows that the situation isn’t getting better and is probably going to keep getting worse,” said Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff.
Sky News in the UK said, based on information from sources, that Microsoft plans to cut about 5% of its jobs, or about 11,000 people.
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A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News that the company plans to cut jobs in several engineering divisions on Wednesday. Insiders said that Microsoft could cut its recruiting staff by as much as one-third.
According to a report from Bloomberg, the cuts will be much bigger than those in other rounds over the past year.
Microsoft didn’t say anything about the reports.
As of June 30, the company had 221,000 full-time employees. Of these, 122,000 were in the United States, and 99,000 were in other countries.
Microsoft is under a lot of pressure to keep its cloud business, Azure, growing. This is because sales of Windows and devices have been hurt by several quarters of falling PC sales.
In July of last year, they said that a few roles had been taken away. In October, the news site Axios said that Microsoft had fired fewer than 1,000 people from a number of different departments.
Shares of Microsoft were a little bit higher in late afternoon trading. On January 24, Microsoft will report its quarterly results.
