Microsoft will reportedly begin the process of cutting thousands of jobs today.

The Windows maker will cut about five per cent of its workforce – around 11,000 roles – according to reports from Sky News and Bloomberg. The reports note that some of the roles will be cut from human resources and engineering divisions.

A further report from Insider claimed that Microsoft could cut its recruiting staff by up to a third.

Microsoft is set to become the latest big US tech firm to announce major job cuts, with the likes of Amazon and Meta also downsizing their workforce in response to slowing demand and worsening financial conditions globally.

As of June 30 2022, Microsoft employed 221,000 full-time staff. This includes 122,000 in the US and 99,000 internationally.

The company underwent smaller downsizing in 2022. It cut a small number of roles in July, while Axios would later report in October that Microsoft had laid off just under 1,000 staff across a range of divisions.

Speaking last week to CNBC, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned the tech industry to brace for two years of difficulty, and said that Microsoft isn’t “immune to the global changes”.

He told the newscaster: “The next two years are probably going to be the most challenging. We did have a lot of acceleration during the pandemic, and there’s some amount of normalisation of that demand. And on top of it, there is a real recession in some parts of the world.”

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