Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at Microsoft Build AI Day in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 30, 2024.
Adek Berry | AFP | Getty Images
Microsoft said Wednesday that it will lay off about 9,000 employees. The move will affect less than 4% of its global workforce across different teams, geographies and levels of experience, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The announcement comes on the second day of Microsoft’s 2026 fiscal year. Executives at the Redmond, Washington-based company typically unveil reorganizations at the time of the new fiscal year.
“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email.
Microsoft has held several rounds of layoffs already this calendar year. In January, it cut less than 1% of headcount based on performance. The 50-year-old software company slashed over 6,000 jobs in May and then at least 300 more in June. As of June 2024 it employed 228,000 people. In 2023, it laid off 10,000.
Perhaps the largest culling of Microsoft workers came in 2014, when the company eliminated 18,000 after acquiring Nokia’s devices and services business.
As was the case with the May layoffs, Microsoft is looking to reduce the number of layers of managers that stand between individual contributors and top executives, the person said.
Microsoft reported nearly $26 billion in net income on $70 billion in revenue for the March quarter. The numbers were well ahead of Wall Street’s consensus, keeping Microsoft ranked as one of the most profitable companies in the S&P 500 index, according to data compiled by FactSet.
Executives called for about 14% year-over-year revenue growth in the June quarter, thanks to expected expansion in Azure cloud services and corporate productivity software subscriptions
Microsoft shares were down about 0.6% at the beginning of Wednesday’s trading session, while the S&P 500 was roughly flat.
Autodesk, Chegg and CrowdStrike are among the other software providers that have slimmed down in 2025. Earlier on Wednesday, Payroll processing company ADP said the U.S. private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June. Economists polled by Dow Jones had predicted an increase of 100,000.
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