Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Tuesday that it will lay off 10,000 workers in its second major round of layoffs in less than four months.
This makes it the social media giant the latest U.S. company to reduce its workforce this year, following cuts at Disney, eBay, General Motors, Twitter, and Yahoo.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social media company is cutting 10,000 of its its nearly 87,000 employees (roughly 12% of its workforce) over the next two months and closing another 5,000 open positions that had not been filled, bringing Meta’s total number of job cuts since November to 21,000 and sending its shares up 4% Tuesday morning.
“Here’s the timeline you should expect: over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates,” Zuckerberg said in a message to employees, which was also posted to the technology company’s blog.
He also stated that Facebook’s parent company intends to fill 5,000 additional open positions. In an apparent reference to the company’s continued economic uncertainty, Zuckerberg stated that it should be prepared for “the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.”
Meta said in an SEC filing announcing the cuts that it expected lower total expenses in 2023, ranging from $86 billion to $92 billion.
The new round of layoffs follows a previous round of layoffs announced in November, which affected over 11,000 workers, or roughly 13% of Meta’s total workforce.