Employees in the American technology sector are unlikely to get any rest these days.

After the abrupt job cuts by the short message service Twitter, according to media reports, the Facebook group Meta is now also planning to lay off several thousand employees.

The American newspapers “Wall Street Journal” and “New York Times” report on this.

According to this, a not small part of the 87,314 employees that Meta last had should receive a notification about their future in the company on Wednesday at the earliest.

Meta initially did not comment on the reports and, after a request from the FAZ, refers to statements by company boss Mark Zuckerberg in connection with the latest quarterly figures.

So Meta only wants to grow “significantly” in a few key areas;

others would either stay the same size or shrink.

Gregory Bruner

Editor in Business.

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Winand von Petersdorff-Campen

Economic correspondent in Washington.

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Said quarterly figures rather suggest a downsizing.

While third-quarter expenses rose 19 percent year-on-year, revenue fell 4 percent and profit fell 52 percent.

The workforce grew by 19 percent in the same period.

According to US media, more than 40,000 employees have been hired since the pandemic began in 2020.

In the outlook of Meta CFO Susan Li, she also names infrastructure and sales costs as cost drivers that will continue to grow.

The "Reality Labs" division, in which the metaverse "Horizon Worlds" is being developed, also devours a lot of money.

In the past quarter, Reality Labs posted an operating loss of almost $3.7 billion.

Year-to-date, it's down $9.4 billion compared to $1.4 billion in sales.

In Li's outlook, she writes that the division's operating losses would "grow significantly" in 2023.

More eyes, less ads

Additional problems for Meta can be found in the advertising revenue that Zuckerberg built his company's success on.

The platforms of Meta, especially Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, are attracting more and more eyes - advertising views increased by 17 percent in the third quarter.

Apparently, however, the group has difficulties selling its advertising space.

Meta had to offer ad space 18 percent cheaper in the same period.

Advertisers have been increasingly reluctant in recent months.

In many countries, higher living costs coupled with a simultaneous recession and rising interest rates are causing consumers to be in a bad mood to spend.

The prospects for savings were celebrated on the stock exchanges on Monday.

Meta shares led the field in the Nasdaq-100 technology index at the opening of Wall Street, up 4 percent.

For a long time it seemed that investors had lost confidence in Meta.

While the Nasdaq 100 has lost about a third of its value since the beginning of the year, the price of Meta shares has fallen by almost three quarters.

Tighter cost management in the group seems to sow hopes.