Technology stocks have had a great year so far. Tech staff, not so much. A new round of layoffs at Microsoft shows that there is still a threat of job cuts in the industry.
Microsoft (Ticker: MSFT) is cutting at least 276 jobs, according to a local government announcement in Washington. According to technology news site GeekWire, which first reported the cuts, the layoffs are likely to be largely focused on customer service, support and sales, and appear to be among the 10,000 jobs Microsoft previously announced…
Technology stocks have had a great year so far. Tech staff, not so much. A new round of layoffs at Microsoft shows that there is still a threat of job cuts in the industry.
Microsoft (Ticker: MSFT) is cutting at least 276 jobs, according to a local government announcement in Washington. According to technology news website GeekWire, which first reported the cuts, the layoffs are likely to be mostly focused on customer service, support and sales, and appear to be among the 10,000 jobs Microsoft announced earlier this year.
Microsoft shares fell 0.1% in premarket trading on Monday.
While the pace of tech job cuts may have slowed since a series of mass layoffs were announced in early 2023, cuts are still happening. Video game maker Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go, announced in late June that it would be shedding around 230 employees, or 25% of its workforce.
More than 216,000 tech workers have been laid off so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks planned layoffs in media reports and company announcements. Its tracker shows that the number of job cuts announced has been steadily declining each month, from a peak of more than 89,000 in January to 10,524 in June.
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Microsoft isn’t the only big tech company still making cuts. Google’s parent company Alphabet (GOOG) recently confirmed to CNBC that it would be eliminating advertising jobs on its Waze map service. Alphabet unveiled plans to cut 12,000 jobs in January.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to Barron’s request for comment early Tuesday.
Write to Adam Clark at [email protected]