Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it will lay off approximately 9,000 employees, marking another significant round of workforce reductions at the tech giant.
The job cuts, which account for less than 4% of the company’s global headcount, will span across various teams, geographic regions, and experience levels, said a CNBC report.
The announcement comes as Microsoft begins its 2026 fiscal year, a period when the company traditionally implements internal reorganizations.
According to a Bloomberg report, Microsoft has also started layoffs in the Xbox division.
The report said the company is cutting 200 jobs or 10% of its staff in the Stockholm-based King division, which makes the game Candy Crush.
“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.
The job cutting adds to the previous layoffs Microsoft has done in 2025 so far.
The layoffs are also part of a broader trend in the software industry, as several other technology companies have also downsized in recent months amid changing economic conditions and shifting strategic priorities.
Ongoing workforce restructuring
This latest move follows several other rounds of layoffs that Microsoft has conducted throughout 2024.
In January, the company let go of fewer than 1% of its workforce, citing performance-based decisions. It then cut over 6,800 jobs in May, followed by at least 300 more in June.
The company in 2023 laid off 10,000 people.
As of June 2024, Microsoft employed approximately 228,000 people globally.
The current round of layoffs echoes a similar strategy employed earlier this year—streamlining management layers to create a more efficient organizational structure.
Microsoft is again looking to reduce the number of managerial tiers between frontline workers and top executives, said the report.
While significant, this restructuring does not reach the scale of Microsoft’s largest workforce reduction in 2014, when it eliminated 18,000 positions after acquiring Nokia’s devices and services division.
Financial performance remains strong
Despite the workforce reductions, Microsoft continues to report strong financial results.
For the March quarter, the company posted nearly $26 billion in net income on $70 billion in revenue, figures that surpassed Wall Street expectations and solidified its standing as one of the most profitable firms in the S&P 500, according to FactSet data.
Executives have projected approximately 14% year-over-year revenue growth for the June quarter, fueled largely by the continued expansion of its Azure cloud services and enterprise software subscriptions.
Microsoft’s stock on Wednesday was largely unchanged, trading up 0.09%, while the broader S&P 500 index inched higher.
Across the tech sector, Microsoft is not alone in making workforce adjustments.
Other software companies such as Autodesk, Chegg, and CrowdStrike have also implemented layoffs this year.
Earlier Wednesday, payroll processor ADP reported that the U.S. private sector shed 33,000 jobs in June, defying economists’ expectations of a 100,000-job gain, based on a Dow Jones poll.
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