Microsoft offers voluntary exit to about 60,000 employees, or 27% of its workforce
Key Facts
Microsoft announced on October 26 a voluntary exit offer allowing about 60,000 employees, or roughly 27% of its global workforce, to apply for a departure package, according to the Associated Press. The company said it would provide financial support and career-planning resources to eligible employees in participating organizations. The number of eligible employees does not mean the company will cut that number of jobs; participation is voluntary, and the company has not specified how many employees it expects to leave. The program allows eligible employees to review the details of their individual offers before deciding. The move comes as Microsoft continues to reshape its workforce and spending priorities.
Eligibility is limited to employees in participating teams in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India, at job level 70 or below, according to the company’s statement. That means the program’s scope is determined by location and job level, as well as whether an employee belongs to an organization that has chosen to participate. Microsoft said the decision varies according to each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs. It added that some organizations are participating in the offer and others are not. The program therefore does not automatically apply to all employees who meet the level requirement or work in one of the four countries. The company said eligible employees would receive an email directing them to details of their individual offers in the hours following the announcement.
Participating units include teams in AI experiences, Copilot, finance, human resources, Xbox and Windows + Devices, according to Reuters. Marketing, commercial and security units are excluded, making the offer’s impact uneven across the company. The inclusion of teams tied to AI products, devices and gaming stands out, but Microsoft said organizational participation is also linked to customer and workforce needs. The distribution does not specify the number of employees in each unit or how many will accept the offer. The actual number of departures therefore depends on employees’ decisions and the scope of participation within each business.
Microsoft had about 223,000 full-time employees as of June 30, 2026, including 121,000 in the United States and 102,000 at international locations, according to its annual report. That figure puts the number of eligible employees cited by the Associated Press in the context of the company’s size, while the 27% figure remains an estimate of the share who can apply, not the share of jobs to be eliminated. In May, the company had planned a buyout offer for about 8,750 employees, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Associated Press. In July, it said it would cut 4,800 jobs, equivalent to about 2.1% of its global workforce at the time. Those moves differ in scope and nature from the current offer, which the company described as voluntary exits.
Reuters’ report links the exit offer to Microsoft’s effort to contain costs and help fund its AI investments. The company had projected in April that it would spend about $190 billion on capital expenditures during calendar year 2026, including about $25 billion due to higher component prices. In a separate report, Reuters said the company had forecast capital expenditures of $175 billion for the same calendar year. Microsoft also said its capital spending totaled $41 billion in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, with about two-thirds allocated to short-lived assets, particularly central processing units and graphics processing units. These figures show the scale of capital spending accompanying the company’s expansion, while Microsoft did not describe the exit offer in its announcement as being intended to fund specific investments.
The announcement follows the voluntary retirement program that Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said the current exit offer builds on lessons from earlier in the year. Microsoft had included about $900 million in one-time costs related to the previous retirement program in its forecast for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. On the April earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said the company expected its employee count to decline year over year in fiscal 2027, while it developed its ways of working to increase speed and flexibility. The company later reported that its total employee count fell 2% year over year in the fiscal fourth quarter. In trading, Microsoft shares rose about 1% on Monday, October 26, according to the Associated Press.