Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is expected to lay off thousands of employees as soon as Wednesday, according to insiders at the company, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Meta currently has approximately 87,000 employees worldwide, but like Twitter — which is about to go through mass layoffs — has struggled to keep advertising revenue up as the economy braces for a long-warned recession next year. The loss in revenue, combined with stronger competition from digital platforms more popular with Gen Z like TikTok and Twitch, has resulted in Meta’s stock dropping 70% this year.
A spokesman for Meta declined to comment to the TheWrap, instead referring to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent statement in the company’s third-quarter earnings call, saying that Meta would “focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas.”
“In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,” Zuckerberg said, predicting that some divisions at Meta would see layoffs while others expand with more hiring.
The impending layoffs at Meta come as Twitter has laid off an estimated 3,700 employees — roughly half of its workforce — after Tesla founder/CEO Elon Musk completed his purchase of the social media site. The abrupt layoffs have led to lawsuits citing violations of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requiring companies to give employees at least 60 days notice of mass layoffs.
