Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced plans to cut around 13 per cent of its workforce.

In a statement, the social media giant’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said 11,000 people would be let go from the company, which employs around 87,000 people.

The news comes after Meta officials told employees to cancel nonessential travel amid rumours that it would start major layoffs this week.

Zuckerberg said that during the pandemic, the surge in e-commerce and resulting revenue growth had led the business to increase investment, as the chief executive thought it would continue after the pandemic ended.

He said that Meta would make more cost cutting measures, as the revenue outlook was lower than expected at the beginning of the year.

“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” Zuckerberg said.

Meta is not the only BigTech company cutting staff, with new Twitter boss Elon Musk recently announcing that he would axe jobs from the social media platform’s 7,500-strong workforce.

Earlier this month, Apple also said that it would pause new hiring.

Zuckerberg said that the firm is taking a number of steps to become more efficient by cutting discretionary spending and extending the hiring freeze through the first quarter of next year.

Zuckerberg said: “I’m currently in the middle of a thorough review of our infrastructure spending. As we build our AI infrastructure, we’re focused on becoming even more efficient with our capacity. Our infrastructure will continue to be an important advantage for Meta, and I believe we can achieve this while spending less.”

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