Meta Shares Fall Following Report It Will Slow Hiring

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), warned staff that he wouldn't rule out further layoffs and doesn't expect the social media business to hire as quickly as it had before the layoffs in late 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Meta Platforms shares fell 1.6% in after-hours and premarket trading following the report.

Zuckerberg reportedly made the comments in a virtual Q&A session with employees on Thursday, one day after the social media company completed its latest round of layoffs.

The WSJ said that according to a recording of the employee town hall meeting, the Meta CEO said to employees that around 4,000 employees, mostly in the company's tech divisions, were impacted by the cuts.

The Facebook parent company is slashing 21,000 jobs as part of a “year of efficiency” at the company.

The report states Meta let go of some of its information problems engineering team, which helps enable fact-checking. The WSJ said its sources told them around 75% of the unit was let go on Wednesday.

However, while Meta will be backfilling positions that have been vacated, regarding net growth, Zuckerberg said employees shouldn't expect more than 1% to 2% year-over-year from now on.

Zuckerberg reportedly said that he thinks “that for where we are in the efficiency that we're able to get from new technologies, that's probably the right model to expect going forward and that will be a different operating model and I think we can do it well.”

The WSJ added that while the cuts were broad, they were “relatively light within Reality Labs,” Meta's the division responsible for virtual and augmented reality.