May 14, 2025 11:26:00

Microsoft lays off 6,000 employees as it cuts management positions

On May 13, 2025, Microsoft announced that it would lay off less than 3% of its employees to reduce management positions. With Microsoft's total employee base of approximately 228,000, it is reported that the layoffs will be around 6,000.

Microsoft laying off about 6,000 people, or 3% of its workforce

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/13/microsoft-is-cutting-3percent-of-workers-across-the-software-company.html

Microsoft Is Cutting 3% of Employees to Reduce Management Layers - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-13/microsoft-is-cutting-3-of-employees-to-reduce-management-layers

Microsoft to lay off 6,000 employees, despite strong earnings report
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/13/microsoft-layoffs-employees-ai

According to Microsoft's announcement, the layoffs will affect less than 3% of employees across all positions, teams and regions, and will include employees in divisions responsible for various core Microsoft services and products, including LinkedIn, Xbox, GitHub and Azure.

The last time Microsoft announced its employee numbers, it had 228,000 employees worldwide as of the end of June 2024. This means that the 3% workforce reduction is expected to result in about 6,000 people being laid off.

Below is a graph created by Bloomberg, an economic newspaper, based on data from Microsoft, showing the trend in employee numbers.

In Washington state, companies are required by law to report large-scale layoffs to the state, and according to

a database published by the state, the workforce reductions in Washington state, where Microsoft's Redmond headquarters is located, are 1,985 people, of which 1,510 are office workers and the remaining 457 are remote workers. While layoffs at American companies can include temporary termination of employment with the assumption of reemployment, this layoff is permanent and is scheduled to be implemented at least in Washington state by July 12, 2025.

Microsoft's 6,000 layoffs will be its largest since 2023, when it cut 10,000 jobs.

Microsoft decides to lay off 10,000 employees, the second largest restructuring in history with a restructuring cost of 154 billion yen - GIGAZINE

The company said the cuts were aimed at reducing management positions and were not related to business performance. Microsoft reported strong quarterly results, with revenue up 13% to $70.1 billion and net income up 18% to $25.8 billion, beating market expectations.

In particular, AI services and the infrastructure business that supports them performed well, with revenue from the server products and cloud services division increasing 22% and revenue from the overall intelligent cloud division increasing 21%.

On the other hand, Microsoft is also under pressure to contain costs due to huge investments in data centers that support its AI services and cloud computing service 'Azure'. The company has also announced that it plans to invest about $80 billion (about 11.7 trillion yen) in fiscal 2025 to train AI models and build AI data centers with that in mind.

Other major technology companies are also scrambling to cut costs. In January, Meta announced layoffs of about 5% of its staff due to performance reasons, and in February Salesforce said it would lay off about 1,000 employees as it stepped up its AI efforts.

'We continue to make necessary organizational changes to best position ourselves to succeed in a dynamic marketplace,' a Microsoft spokesperson said in a media statement.