According to media reports, the Facebook group Meta is about to face the next major job cuts. The second wave of job cuts should begin on Wednesday, the Financial Times wrote on Tuesday, citing informed people. The “Wall Street Journal” recently reported that the cuts are likely to last in several rounds over the coming months. They could ultimately reach the extent of the job cuts of last November, when around 11,000 employees had to go, around 13 percent.
According to Meta, other online giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft have also cut thousands of jobs in the past few months – after hiring new employees on a large scale during the boom for their business in the corona pandemic. The Facebook group would now be the first to resort to a second major round of layoffs. Founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg had proclaimed 2023 the “Year of Efficiency”.
During the pandemic, many small businesses turned to Facebook advertising to boost their business. Meta made good money and also hired heavily. At the end of 2019, the group had 45,000 employees, at the time of the job cuts in November 2022 there were over 87,000.
Meta senses the reluctance of advertisers who pay more attention to their money. Also, the Tiktok app is a strong rival in the fight for advertising dollars – and Apple’s privacy protections on the iPhone made ads on Facebook less efficient. At the same time, Zuckerberg is investing many billions in the development of virtual “metaverse” worlds. Last year alone, the corresponding Reality Labs division posted an operating loss of a good 13.7 billion dollars (currently 12.78 billion euros).
The “Financial Times” wrote that the areas of politics, marketing and communication should be more affected than others by the next round of layoffs. (dpa)