Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced that it will cut 13% of its workforce.
Thelagostimes gathered that this indicates that over 11,000 employees from a worldwide headcount of 87,000 risk losing their jobs.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, on Wednesday, revealed that these are “the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history”.
“I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted,” he wrote in a statement.
According to Reuters, the mass layoffs, one of the biggest this year and the first in Meta’s 18-year history, follow thousands of job cuts at other tech companies including Elon Musk-owned Twitter, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Snap Inc .
Reuters, in a report, noted that Meta hired aggressively during the pandemic to meet a surge in social media usage by stuck-at-home consumers. However, its business has suffered this year as advertisers and consumers pull the plug on spending in the face of soaring cost pressures and rapidly rising interest rates.
Meta, once worth more than a trillion dollars, is now valued at $256 billion after losing more than 70% of its value this year alone.