On Tuesday, Microsoft said it is cutting less than 3% of its global workforce, including at LinkedIn. The company employed an estimated 228,000 workers as of last June, meaning the layoffs will affect approximately 6,000 employees. The tech giant, which makes the popular software products Windows and Word, will make cuts across various locations, teams, and roles.
“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Fast Company.
The news comes less than two weeks after the Redmond, Washington-based company beat first-quarter earnings expectations, driven by its Azure cloud business. It also issued strong guidance going forward, despite President’s Trump’s tariffs and overall economic uncertainty. Microsoft also said it invested heavily in AI infrastructure during the first quarter of 2025.
Microsoft said that it regularly adjusts its workforce to meet the strategic demands of the business, and that by reducing layers with fewer managers, the company hopes to increase agility and enhance efficiency by minimizing redundancy and streamlining processes, procedures, and roles. It also said the cuts will let employees spend more time leveraging new technologies and capabilities.
On Tuesday, a number of LinkedIn employees posted about the reported layoffs on LinkedIn. The layoffs would be the largest at the company since 2023, when Microsoft eliminated 10,000 jobs, and follows a small round of performance-based layoffs at the beginning of 2025. However, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC the upcoming layoffs are not performance-based.
CEO Satya Nadella previously said Microsoft planned to spend $80 billion on data centers for artificial intelligence workloads in 2025, which could be even more costly with tariffs.
Microsoft isn’t the only tech company to make cuts since the beginning of this year. A number of high-profile technology giants have been trimming their ranks, including Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms cut about 5% of its workforce—roughly 3,600 employees—in February, and Amazon announced it was laying off dozens at the end of January.