Zuckerberg to cut 10,000 jobs at Meta in face of tech crisis

MARK ZUCKERBERG has announced another deep round of job cuts at Facebook-owner Meta as he warned that the current tech industry slump could drag on “for many years”.

Meta plans to cut another 10,000 jobs in April and May in the second round of heavy redundancies in less than five months. The company will also cancel around 5,000 job openings.

The latest round of cuts follows 11,000 job losses in November.

Mr Zuckerberg said Meta needed to go further given his growing conviction that economic problems could drag on for years. He said: “For most of our history, we saw rapid revenue growth year after year and had the resources to invest in many new products. But last year was a humbling wake-up call.

“At this point, I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation. Given this outlook, we’ll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success.”

Mr Zuckerberg said he hoped he would not have to lose more staff. The two recent rounds of redundancies mean Meta will have shrunk the size of its workforce by almost a quarter.

Job cuts have swept across the tech industry in recent months, with Amazon, Google and Microsoft announcing thousands of redundancies.

Meta has suffered three consecutive quarters of falling revenues, amid a struggling digital advertising market and a privacy crackdown from Apple that has made it harder to target ads.

Mr Zuckerberg’s expensive bet on the metaverse – digital worlds accessed through virtual reality headsets – has also failed to bear fruit. He has said 2023 will be the “year of efficiency” at Meta, with some projects cancelled and management bureaucracy curtailed.

Mr Zuckerberg said the latest round of cuts would “make us a better technology company and … improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long-term vision”.

Meta told shareholders that the cuts would mean up to $5bn (£4.1bn) in restructuring costs but would reduce spending by around $3bn this year.

Shares rose more than 5pc in early US trading.

Mr Zuckerberg said: “This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success.”