How many people Meta is firing? 8,000 is the number but reality is 14,000 jobs

On Thursday, Meta employees received a memo from Janelle Gale, the chief people officer or HR head so to speak. As is the trend with most sudden emails in the tech world these days, Meta wanted them to know that some of them were going to lose their jobs. How many might you ask? On the surface, 8,000. But in reality, the answer is higher.

In the memo, Janelle states that Meta will be “laying off around 10 per cent of the company on May 20.” The Mark Zuckerberg-led firm is reported to have a global workforce of around 79,000 employees. This translates to just under 8,000 employees losing their jobs outright. After May 20, 2026, they will no longer be Meta employees, and would need to find a new job.

However, this is not as simple. The memo had another line to it, Meta was also “closing about 6,000 open roles.” Now you may argue that since these roles were open, and no one actually had, these don’t count. But hear us out, these are also lost jobs.

14,000 Meta jobs now gone

To understand why we are counting the 6,000 open roles here, we first need to understand what open roles actually are. Open roles refer to openings or vacancies that a company is actively trying to fill. That is, it was probably a role held by someone who may have left the company.

In effect, this means that most of the 6,000 open roles that Meta had listed were jobs that 6,000 people could’ve got. At a time when Oracle, Amazon, and many other companies are firing thousands, these 6,000 roles could’ve served as a lifeline to those who may have recently been laid off, lifelines which now no longer exist.

While Meta has only fired 8,000 workers, it has, in a way, reduced its global workforce by 14,000. Since the company has no plans of hiring for those roles. And why did Meta do this? The same reason every other company is firing people for – AI.

Going all in on AI but what’s the cost?

Though Meta doesn’t actually say AI. The memo reads that this would allow them to “offset the other investments we’re making.” For context, Meta is spending hundreds of billions in AI. From acquiring AI startups like Manus AI, to building an AI avatar of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company has some big plans.

And apparently, these plans need sacrifices. Not just of jobs either. The company is now planning to track mouse movements and keystrokes of its employees, which is supposed to make AI better at doing work. In a way, employees may now train the AI that can potentially replace them.

This is not the end. As per previous reports, Meta may fire another 8,000 people in the coming weeks, which would bring this number up to 22,000. But we shall pass that bridge when we get to it.