Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is set to lay off thousands of employees this week to combat 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.
As of September, Meta had about 87,000 employees worldwide across its different platforms, which include social media sites Facebook and Instagram and messaging platform WhatsApp.
Meta’s third-quarter profits fell to $4.4 billion, a 52 percent decrease year over year. The disappointing results caused Meta’s stock price to take a major hit, falling 25 percent 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. The paper said an official announcement would be made on 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.
Meta’s latest plans 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 suffer from advertisers’ budget cuts as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.
