Microsoft is preparing to cut under 2.5% of its workforce in another round of layoffs, according to a Business Insider report picked up on Tuesday. The reductions could be announced as soon as next week, and they would affect thousands of roles across the company.
Sales and consulting teams are in the frame, alongside jobs in the Xbox gaming division, per the report. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the plan has not been confirmed by an official filing or a company statement.
The scale matters here, because the headline figure has been easy to misread. This is a cut of fewer than 2.5% of staff, not 25%. The confusion comes straight from the decimal point. A stray reading of “under 2.5%” as “under 25%” would overstate the cuts tenfold, so the smaller number is the one that holds up across the reporting.
Microsoft counted roughly 228,000 full-time employees as of 30 June 2025, so a sub-2.5% reduction points to several thousand roles rather than a mass purge. Even at the smaller end, the number runs well into the low thousands.
It would also be a lighter round than the last big one. In July 2025, the company said it would lay off nearly 4% of its workforce, one of its largest cuts in recent years.
