Meta layoffs: 10% workforce cut on May 20, more job cuts likely

Meta is gearing up for another round of workforce restructuring, with additional layoffs likely even after a major cut planned later this month, highlighting the company’s continued shift in priorities.

The company plans to cut about 10 per cent of its global workforce, affecting roughly 8,000 employees, with the initial phase of the layoffs scheduled to launch on May 20.

The relocate represents one of the company’s largest job cuts in recent years and is part of a broader push to streamline operations and cut costs. However, the May layoffs may not mark the conclude of the downsizing, with Meta indicating that more cuts could follow later this year, though their timing and scale remain unclear.

This indicates the company is continuing to reassess its workforce requireds amid rapidly evolving business conditions following the surge in artificial ininformigence technology.

The restructuring comes as Meta steps up investments in artificial ininformigence and related infrastructure, which are increasingly central to its long-term strategy.

The company is shifting resources toward priority areas while reducing headcount to boost efficiency and control rising costs. Executives have declared there is no clear “ideal size” for the organisation at this stage, highlighting ongoing uncertainty around future workforce planning.

At the same time, leadership has not ruled out further layoffs. The latest job cuts come amid a broader trconclude across the global tech sector, with companies restructuring operations, slowing hiring, and ramping up investments in AI capabilities.

Third round of layoff

Recent one is the third round of Meta job cuts in 2026 alone. The first came in January when roughly 1,500 Reality Labs staff were let go, including the closure of four internal VR game studios. March brought another 700 cuts across Facebook, recruiting, sales, and global operations. Thursday’s announcement is by far the largest of the three and it’s not the last. A second wave of cuts is reportedly planned for the second half of 2026, with no indication yet of scale.

The layoffs are described as structural rather than performance-based, with Meta reorganising remaining teams into AI-focutilized units and shifting engineers from across the business into its Applied AI organisation. In other words, this isn’t about poor performers being managed out. It’s about the company deciding entire categories of work no longer required as many humans to do them.

The uncomfortable truth sitting underneath all of this is that Meta is not an outlier. More and more companies have trimmed their workforces over the past year, pointing to what they describe as AI’s ability to improve efficiency. Microsoft announced purchaseouts around the same period. Amazon, Google, and Salesforce have all built cuts framed in similar language efficiency, focus, investment in the future.

What none of these announcements fully acknowledge is that the investment in AI being utilized to justify the cuts is also the technology creating those cuts structurally permanent. Unlike previous rounds of tech layoffs where companies hired back aggressively once conditions improved there is no obvious rehiring cycle waiting on the other side of this one. The roles being eliminated aren’t being pautilized. They’re being replaced by systems that don’t take salaries, don’t required health insurance, and don’t sconclude internal memos to each other when things go wrong.

Meta’s total workforce stands at 78,865 people.

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