Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees, that’s HALF of their total US workforce and 27% of global workforce.

Microsoft told employees Monday it is opening a voluntary exit offer to about 60,000 people, or roughly 27 percent of its 223,000-person worldwide workforce. Eligible staff sit at level 70 and below on selected teams in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom; groups such as Xbox, Windows, Copilot, and finance are in, while some sales, marketing, security, and data-center roles are out. Packages track the company’s standard severance and include continued stock vesting plus health coverage for a set period. Workers have until early December to decide and would leave by year-end if they accept. The company expects a lower take-up rate than the roughly 30 percent who took an earlier, smaller U.S.-only retirement program this spring that covered about 8,750 people. Microsoft has already cut several thousand jobs this year, including at Xbox, while pouring tens of billions into data centers and AI infrastructure. Chief People Officer Amy Coleman called the offer a way to give teams more flexibility without immediate large-scale layoffs. Shares rose about 1 percent on the news.

It’s already screwing people up and we’re not even in a recession.

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-buyout-ai-layoff-xbox-c5a639f53615be198db1799adf6837e1

https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-is-offering-buyouts-around-60000-employees-business-insider-reports-2026-10-26/