Tech layoffs 2025: Salesforce to slash 1,000 jobs as it joins Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and more in cutting roles

The new year isn’t getting off to a great start when it comes to employment in the tech industry. Tech giant Salesforce is reportedly getting ready to cut 1,000 roles at the company. The expected job cuts are just the latest in a line of layoffs already initiated by well-known companies in the technology sector, including Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. Here’s what you need to know.

Salesforce to reportedly lay off over 1,000 employees

Today, Bloomberg reported that Salesforce, the world’s top customer relationship management software company, will be cutting more than 1,000 positions at the company. The news came from an unnamed source and was not an official announcement from Salesforce.

Nothing is known about which departments will be hit hardest by the cuts. However, a Bloomberg source said that any displaced workers will be allowed to apply for other positions at the company. We’ve reached out to Salesforce for comment.

It’s also worth noting that these cuts aren’t a net job reduction at Salesforce, as the company is also currently actively hiring salespeople to promote its AI offerings to customers.

Salesforce reported having 73,000 employees as of January 2024, which means that a reduction of 1,000 personnel equates to fewer than 1% of its workforce.

Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and more cut jobs

Despite being fewer than seven weeks into the new year, many major tech companies have already announced plans to reduce their workforce or cut staff in 2025.

In mid-January, Facebook parent company Meta Platforms announced it would cut about 5% of its workforce. A 5% reduction in staff equates to layoffs totaling about 3,600 people, noted Bloomberg. As of last September, Meta employed about 72,000 workers. Announcing the cuts in an internal memo, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster.”

And Meta isn’t alone. In January, Microsoft also laid off some workers it deemed low performers, Business Insider reported. It is unknown how many employees at the Redmond company would lose their roles. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Amazon in January also announced it would eliminate staff, Bloomberg reported, with dozens in its communications department being targeted.

And it’s not just the big tech giants.

Smaller tech companies have also announced layoffs since the new year began. Those companies include payments platform Stripe, which is eliminating 300 positions, and Placer.ai, the Israeli location analytics firm, which is laying off 150 workers.

A repeat of 2022-2024?

The large number of high-profile tech companies that have announced layoffs in the early days of 2025 has understandably given rise to anxieties of those in the industry who lived through the massive job cuts implemented by the industry between 2022 and 2024, when hundreds of thousands of tech workers lost their jobs. What workers now want to know is if 2025 will be a repeat of those years. 

At this point, that’s impossible to answer. However, the 2022-2024 period of mass tech industry layoffs was generally spurred by overhiring during the pandemic years when many tech companies saw a rapid uptick in users and customers.

In 2025, the greatest threats of job layoffs don’t come from pandemic-induced overhiring as much as they do from the rising specter of AI and its ability to replace human workers. It remains to be seen whether AI will pose a serious risk to tech industry jobs this year.

As for layoffs in the tech industry, layoffs tracking site Layoffs.fyi says that so far in 2025, 31 tech companies have laid off just over 7,000 employees. That compares to the 152,000 employees laid off across various companies in 2024 and the 264,000 and 165,000 laid off in 2023 and 2022, respectively.