Microsoft Corp Reportedly Plans to Lay Off 11.000 Employees in Various Positions

JAKARTA - Microsoft Corp plans to cut thousands of jobs with several roles expected to be eliminated in its human resources and engineering division. The planned layoffs were reported by a number of media in the US Tuesday, January 17.

These layoffs will be the latest on record in the US tech sector, where companies including Amazon.com Inc and Meta Platforms Inc have also announced austerity “exercise” in response to slowing demand and a deteriorating global economic outlook.

Microsoft's move could indicate that the tech sector could continue to lose jobs this year.

"From a big picture perspective, the round of pending layoffs at Microsoft shows the environment is not improving, and is likely to continue to deteriorate," said Morningstar analyst Dan Romanoff.

British media, Sky News, also reported, quoting a source, that Microsoft plans to cut around 5% of its workforce, or around 11,000 positions in its company.

They plan to cut jobs in a number of engineering divisions, according to a report, Bloomberg News on Wednesday, Jan. 18, according to a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, Insider reports that Microsoft could cut staff hiring by as much as a third of its total employees.

Even Bloomberg predicts these layoffs will be much bigger than any other round in the past year.

While Microsoft declined to comment on the media reports. Microsoft now has 221.000 full-time employees, including 122.000 in the United States and 99.000 internationally, as of June 30.

Microsoft is under pressure to maintain growth rates in its cloud unit Azure, after several quarters of declines in the personal computer market hurt Windows and device sales.

It said in July last year that a small number of positions at the company had been eliminated. In October 2022, news site Axios reported that Microsoft had laid off less than 1.000 employees across several divisions.

Microsoft shares, which will report quarterly results on January 24, edged slightly higher in afternoon trading.