Microsoft says it is cutting thousands of jobs in second round of layoffs in recent months

Microsoft says it is cutting thousands of jobs in its second round of mass layoffs in recent months.

While the company didn't specify the exact number of people who would be losing their jobs, it did say it was less than four per cent of its total workforce, which would be about 9,000 people at most. (The company employed 228,000 people as of June 2024.)

Microsoft also did not directly respond to a question from CBC News about how many Canadian jobs were lost as a result of the layoffs, but said the cuts were happening across different teams and locations.

However, Carmel Smyth, president of CWA Canada, said the union doesn't believe any of the 120 employees it represents at Montreal-based Bethesda Game Studios (owned by Microsoft) will be impacted. She also says the cuts will likely affect Microsoft's U.S. studios for the most part, but added "any downsizing of workers in this profitable and booming industry is highly disappointing." (CWA Canada also indirectly represents CBC employees, and Smyth is on leave from her role as a producer with the CBC.)

Microsoft said the cuts will affect multiple teams around the world, including its sales division and its Xbox video game business. On the whole, the gaming industry has seen job losses in recent years. 

"We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace," a spokesperson said in an email.

WATCH | Hundreds laid off in Canadian video game industry: 

Hundreds laid off in Canadian video game industry

1 year ago

Duration 2:02

Last year saw hundreds of layoffs in Canada's video game industry, a trend that's expected to continue in 2024, which some say is a reason for video game workers to unionize.

The reductions come after Microsoft first laid off some 6,000 employees in May. It also cut another 300 workers based out of its Redmond, Wash., headquarters in June. And in 2023, it laid off 10,000 people, or five per cent of its total workforce.

The cuts announced in May were heavily focused in software engineering and product management roles, according to lists the company sent to employment agencies in Washington and California — where the cuts also hit Microsoft offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The company has repeatedly said its recent layoffs are part of a push to trim its management layers, but the May focus on software engineering has fuelled worries about how the company's own AI code-writing products could reduce the number of people need for those jobs.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said earlier this year that "maybe 20, 30 per cent of the code" for some of Microsoft's coding projects "are probably all written by software."