Facebook parent company to sack 11,000 workers after revenues plummet

Meta, the parent company of Facebook which is owned by American business magnate Mark Zuckerberg is letting go of 11,000 workers – translating to around one eighth of staff – after revenues plummeted, leaving the company “inefficient” and overstaffed.

The news comes to light through a note sent to staff by Mr Zuckerberg, co-founder, chairman and CEO at Meta, and marks the first round of redundancies in the company’s history. This after the company’s workforce peaked earlier this year at 87,314 workers.

Mr Zuckerberg reportedly told staff that the firm overinvested at the start of the pandemic, on the assumption that online activity would continue at an accelerated pace after COVID died down.

“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,” he said.

This comes just a week after widespread redundancies at social media competitor Twitter, under its new billionaire owner, Elon Musk. Last week, Twitter let go of around 7,500 staff as the company’s share value dropped.