Meta is set to lay off approximately 8,000 employees — about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000-person workforce — on Wednesday, May 21, 2026, with termination notices scheduled to hit workers’ personal and corporate email addresses at 4 am local time across Singapore, London, and San Francisco.
In the days leading up to the cuts, employees have largely abandoned offices to polish résumés, meet with colleagues, and use up remaining perks. Workers have been rushing to spend an annual $2,000 flexible benefit covering health and wellness expenses, as well as a $200 triennial credit toward audio equipment, triggering a scramble for Apple AirPods and other headphones. Management has encouraged staff not to come into the office on Wednesday. Teams in New York and Menlo Park have been gathering at nearby bars and restaurants to mark what may be their final days as colleagues.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the layoffs are necessary to free up capital for AI data center investment, and that AI technologies augmenting human labor mean the company can operate effectively with a smaller headcount. The cuts come despite Meta reporting record-high profits.
Beyond the layoffs themselves, Meta also plans to transfer 7,000 remaining employees into AI-focused roles and convert a number of managers into individual contributors. Reuters reported — and WIRED independently confirmed — that this would bring the total number of employees either laid off or moved into new roles to roughly 20 percent of the current workforce.
The announcement has drawn heightened scrutiny because it arrives amid broad public concern about AI’s effect on employment. Inside the company, morale has reportedly sunk to unprecedented lows, according to 16 current and former employees who spoke to WIRED. Additional grievances include employees being assigned to a new AI team without choice and the rollout of surveillance software tracking US workers’ laptop activity to train AI models.
This marks Meta’s fourth major round of layoffs since 2022, following previous cuts that included a large-scale “year of efficiency” reduction in 2023. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
Source: WIRED