The tech industry layoffs show no signs of stopping: Microsoft has just announced job cuts for 3% of its total workforce, across all levels, teams, and locations.
Microsoft says that these new layoffs are due to “organizational changes.” Last January, Microsoft’s previous round of layoffs was tied to performance, but that’s not the case this time.
The news comes after the tech giant had reported better results than expected in late April, with $25.8 billion in quarterly net income.
About 6,000 Jobs Will Be Lost
Microsoft had about 228,000 employees around the globe as of last year. The impacted workers will likely total around 6,000, and will include all areas of the company, including the LinkedIn team. It’s the biggest round of job cuts from the company since a 2023 layoff that cost 10,000 workers their positions.
According to a spokesperson, Microsoft aims to “reduce layers of management” with these latest cuts. AI was not mentioned.
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This goal may be familiar to those following corporate layoff news: Amazon cited “unnecessary layers” as a reason why it planned to cut some workers in a January announcement.
The Tech Job Market Is Not Doing Great
According to industry watchdog site Layoffs.FYI, a little over 59,400 tech employees across 127 companies have been laid off so far in 2025.
Granted, that number is down significantly from the previous two years, even after accounting for the fact that we’re not quite halfway through this year.
In 2024, we saw mass layoffs in the tech world to the tune of 152,922 employees across 551 tech companies, and in 2023, a shocking 264,220 tech employees lost their positions across 1,193 tech companies.
However, many of those employees are likely still searching for their next gig, given the many online forums full of job seekers bemoaning the thousands of applications that they’ve been sending out for a year or longer with no payoff. Now, the labor market will be weaker than ever, as competition increases.
Tech Companies Keep Laying People Off
In January, the company behind Word and Windows laid off 2,000 underperforming employees, without severance. Now, it’s pushing even further for efficiency, even despite strong performance.
It’s a trend that plenty of other companies are following in 2025, from Google to Amazon. Even outside of tech, economic shifts and new tariffs have incentivized companies to cut jobs fast and often. Earlier this week, we covered the shipping company DHL’s decision to lay off 364 employees.
One has to wonder if we made a bit of a mistake in tying everyone’s ability to exist to their job.
