Microsoft kicks off new fiscal year with more layoffs

Reports of 9,000 staff cut

Microsoft's recent trend of wide-scale workforce reduction continues, with reports that Redmond is preparing to slash an additional 4 percent of its employees – or around 9,000 people.

Several outlets reported Microsoft's plans to conduct another cull today, with all generally agreeing that the Windows shop planned to eliminate around 9,000 positions across teams, geographies, and seniority levels.

Microsoft hasn't formally announced plans to cut staff, and our questions went unanswered, aside from the canned statement Microsoft has been providing multiple outlets for months.

"We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace," a company spokesperson told The Register. That's the same line we were given in May when we reported Microsoft's previous round of layoffs.

The 9,000 layoffs would mark Microsoft's second major workforce reduction of the 2025 calendar year – though not in Microsoft's fiscal year, which conveniently began on July 1.

In the May round, Microsoft cut around 3 percent of staff, amounting to around 7,000 roles. As we found out after first reporting those layoffs, the round hit software engineers particularly hard, fueling speculation that Microsoft was laying off workers to replace them with AI.

There have been plenty of reports and speculation that AI will eliminate jobs in a new wave of automation, and evidence indicating that this is already happening. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that 30% of Microsoft's code is now written by AI, but the Windows giant told us in May that it wasn't laying off humans in favor of AI.

Along with the May and July layoffs, Microsoft also cut a little under 1 percent of its staff in January, meaning the company has apparently shed more than 16,000 roles since the beginning of 2025. We've always referred to 2023, when Microsoft let more than 10,000 people go, as a bloodbath year, but it seems 2025 may be a new high-water mark. ®