(KRON) — Microsoft will be laying off 10,000 people this year, the company announced in a securities filing Wednesday. The tech giant, which is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, is the latest major tech company to announce job cuts.
“Today, we are making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3,” read the filing. “This represents less than 5 percent of our total employee base.”
Last year, Bay Area tech giants Twitter, Meta Inc. and Salesforce all laid off significant numbers of staff, in what’s been seen as an indication the tech industry is facing headwinds in the wake of the pandemic.
In the SEC filing, the company cited now-familiar conditions as being behind the layoffs.
“We say customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic,” it read in part, “we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less.”
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A reduction in digital spend has been a common refrain among tech companies announcing layoffs. Many tech firms took on additional staff to meet increased demand during the height of the pandemic. Now, in a post-pandemic reality, tech companies are reducing staffing levels, in may cases back to where they were at the outset of the pandemic.
The note accompanying the filing called the decision to lay off staff “difficult, but necessary.”
Notifications for employees who are losing their jobs could start going out as soon as today.
Microsoft operates three offices in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is not known what percentage of the layoffs will impact employees locally.
