Meta to lay off 10,000 employees in second round of job cuts

Facebook-parent Meta Platforms META.O said on Tuesday it would cut 10,000 jobs, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees, the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs.

"We expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven't yet hired," Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to staff, reports Reuters.

The layoffs are part of a wider restructuring at Meta that will see the company flatten its organisational structure, cancel lower priority projects and reduce its hiring rates as part of the move. The news sent Meta's shares up 2% in premarket trading.

The move underscores Zuckerberg's push to turn 2023 into the "Year of Efficiency" with promised cost cuts of $5 billion in expenses to between $89 billion and $95 billion.

A deteriorating economy has brought about a series of mass job cuts across corporate America: from Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs GS.N and Morgan Stanley MS.N to Big Tech firms including Amazon.com AMZN.O and Microsoft MSFT.O.

The tech industry has laid off more than 280,000 workers since the start of 2022, with about 40% of them coming this year, according to layoffs tracking site layoffs.fyi.

Meta, which is pouring billions of dollars to build the futuristic metaverse, has struggled with a post-pandemic slump in advertising spending from companies facing high inflation and rising interest rates.

Meta's move in November to slash headcount by 13% marked the first mass layoffs in its 18-year history. Its headcount stood at 86,482 at 2022-end, up 20% from a year ago.