Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Wednesday that it will lay off more than 11,000 employees as the company struggles financially amid high inflation and a possible recession in the future.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to employees that the layoffs will reduce the size of the company’s staff by about 13 percent. He also said Meta is taking steps to become a “leaner and more efficient” company through cutting discretionary spending and extending a hiring freeze through the first quarter of next year.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg said. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
He said the start of the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased revenue growth in e-commerce, which he and others predicted would be permanent, leading Zuckerberg to significantly invest the company’s interests in it.
He said an economic downturn, increased competition and difficulties with online advertising caused Meta’s revenue to be much lower than expected, however, necessitating the layoffs. He said Meta is shifting its resources to several “high priority growth areas” and restructured teams to increase efficiency while cutting costs, but it will not be enough to avoid layoffs.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Sunday that Meta would lay off thousands of employees, following the lead of other tech companies like Amazon and Netflix that have done so as the country has come out of the pandemic and economic concerns linger.
Meta’s announcement comes less than a week after Twitter CEO Elon Musk laid off a few thousand employees at his company to help get its massive debt under control.
Zuckerberg said employees will soon get an email notifying them what the layoff means for them, and the company will do whatever it can to help the laid off employees.