Microsoft to layoff 10,000 people, increasing job cuts in tech

Microsoft Corp has said it will eliminate 10,000 jobs and take a $1.2bn charge as its cloud-computing customers dissect their spending and the company braces for potential recession. The layoffs, announced on Wednesday and far larger than cuts by Microsoft last year, piled on to tens of thousands of job cuts across the technology sector that is long past its ceaseless growth during the pandemic. The news was particularly dramatic coming from Microsoft, a software maker heavily invested in generative artificial intelligence that represents an industry bright spot. However, Microsoft will cut far fewer jobs than it had added during the COVID-19 pandemic as it responded to a boom in demand for its workplace software and cloud computing services with so many people working and studying from home. Microsoft's workforce expanded by about 36 percent in the two fiscal years following the emergence of the pandemic, growing from 163,000 workers at the end of June 2020, to 221,000 in June 2022.