The parent company of Facebook, Meta, is set to lay off thousands of employees this week as a measure to fight economic headwinds.
In a similar move, Twitter, which was recently acquired by Elon Musk, abruptly fired about half of its 7,500 employees last week.
Meta had about 87,000 employees worldwide across its different platforms, which include social media sites Facebook and Instagram as well as messaging platform WhatsApp, as of September.
Meta in the third quarter saw its profits fall to $4.4 billion, a 52 per cent decrease year-over-year and its stock price took a major hit on the disappointing results, falling 25 per cent in one day.
The company’s market value over the past year is down to $600 billion.
In addition to its ad-supported business woes, investors have been worried about Zuckerberg’s decision to devote major funds to developing the metaverse.
According to, The Wall Street Journal the layoffs could impact “many thousands” of Meta employees, saying that an official announcement would be made Wednesday.
In his announcement of Meta’s disappointing third-quarter results, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the firm’s staff would not increase by the end of 2023 and might decrease slightly.
The latest plans from Meta follow recent announcements by other tech firms to freeze hiring or cut their workforce as the industry fights economic headwinds.
However, on Thursday Silicon Valley firms Stripe and Lyft announced large-scale layoffs while Amazon said it would freeze hiring in its corporate offices.
Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Alphabet’s Google are suffering from advertisers’ budget cuts as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.
