Microsoft To Axe Thousands Of Sales Staff – Report

Microsoft is reportedly preparing to cut thousands of more jobs, in another worrying development for its global workforce.

Bloomberg reported that the job losses, aimed mostly at sales teams (but possibly also other departments), could be announced in early July after Redmond’s Q4 and fiscal year end ends on 30 June.

Last month in May 2025, Microsoft had already confirmed it was laying off 3 percent of its workforce across all levels, teams and regions (some 6,000 staff) – the firm’s biggest round of layoffs since 2023, when it slashed more than 10,000 staff amongst a broader wave of post-pandemic adjustments in the tech industry.

Microsoft job losses

Microsoft had 228,000 employees at the end of June 2024, with 126,000 in the US.

This job layoffs come amid Microsoft’s heavy spending on AI, with a planned a capital expenditure of $80 billion this fiscal year, with most of it aimed at expanding its data centre footprint and capacity.

But for those Microsoft staff impacted by the job losses, the fact that the tech giant in April had reported better-than-expected profits of $25.8 billion (£19.4bn), as well as a strong forecast, will do little to ease their frustration at the move.

In January 2025 Microsoft had confirmed it was cutting a small percentage of jobs across departments, based on performance.

Tech job losses

Microsoft is not the only tech giant currently axing staff.

Earlier this week CEO Andy Jassy in a memo had warned white collar staff at Amazon that their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence in the next few years.

That warning came amid ongoing layoffs at Amazon in a number of its departments.

Earlier this month Google offered ‘buyouts’ (aka redundancies) to employees within its knowledge and information and central engineering units, as well as the marketing, research and communications teams.