"Organizational changes": Microsoft lays off thousands of employees

The US tech group Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it intends to lay off three percent of its workforce worldwide. This was reported by the US news channel CNBC. Around 6,000 employees "at all levels, in all teams and in all regions" would be affected.

"We are continuing the organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic market," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC, justifying the move. This comes after Microsoft reported better than expected quarterly profits of 25.8 billion US dollars at the end of April and also issued an optimistic forecast. Microsoft's business was boosted in particular by artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services.

"Big tech has spent heavily on AI as it sees the new technology as a key growth driver, while cutting costs elsewhere to protect its profit margins," writes the news agency Reuters. US tech giant Google laid off hundreds of employees last year to cut costs and prioritize AI. Just last week, IT security service provider Crowdstrike announced that it was cutting around 500 jobs, which equates to around five percent of its global workforce, citing a change due to AI. The Meta Group is also planning further mass redundancies.

At Microsoft, the announced job cuts are the largest round of redundancies since 10,000 jobs were cut at the beginning of 2023. At the time, this amounted to just under five percent of the total workforce. At the end of June last year, Microsoft employed 228,000 people worldwide, according to CNBC. In January, the company already announced a small round of redundancies in several departments, which were performance-related. The new redundancies now announced, on the other hand, are not performance-related, according to the Microsoft spokesperson. One aim is to reduce management levels.

(akn)