According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook parent company Meta could announce large-scale layoffs as early as next week, with the social media company’s cuts expected to affect “many thousands of its workforce,” said the journal citing “people familiar with the matter.”
If true this could represent the first broad restructuring of Meta, which currently employs more than 87,000 people, as it sets its sights on a future business model more closely tied to the metaverse.
Meta has yet to comment on the WSJ report but a spokesperson for the company pointed to a statement by CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the Q3 earnings call when he said “In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year.”
During that call Zuckerberg went on to say: “In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
Meta shares have dropped 73% this year – their lowest since early 2016, ranking the social media giant is the worst performer in the S&P 500 for 2022.
