Facebook parent company Meta is reportedly set to lay off large numbers of employees this week, with an announcement possibly coming on Wednesday.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the layoffs will affect thousands of Meta’s 87,000 employees worldwide.
In October, Meta predicted a difficult coming quarter and higher costs for the following year, reducing the company’s stock market value by approximately $67 billion and adding to the more than $500 billion already lost this year.
The pessimistic picture comes as Meta contends with sluggish global economic growth and concerns regarding the level of spending on the metaverse.
The metaverse, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for a virtual reality internet space where users can interact with friends, work and study, has proved much less popular with consumers than anticipated, with heavy investments in VR technology widely believed to have been a waste.
According to Zuckerberg, it will take approximately s long as a decade for the investments in the metaverse to bear fruit.
In an earlier open letter to Zuckerberg, Altimeter Capital Management, Meta’s shareholder, stated that the company needs to streamline by reducing employee numbers and capital expenditure. It said that Meta had lost investor trust as it increased spending and shifted its focus to the metaverse.