Facebook owner Meta to cut around 50 Irish jobs

For Meta employees in Ireland, the number of job losses in this round of layoffs is less than expected. Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Facebook owner Meta is expected to officially layoff around 50 more people at their Irish operations after the tech giant announced a second round of global job cuts this week.

Meta Ireland indicated the layoffs will impact the company’s recruitment team based here, which is in line with what CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post this week.

“With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team,” he wrote.

This is in addition to 350 people who were made redundant at Meta offices as part of its first round of layoffs announced last year.

The Taoiseach and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment were notified by Meta about the new redundancies on March 15, one day after its said it would further slim down its workforce.

Meta are expected to announce further restructuring and layoffs in its tech teams in late April and in its business groups in late May.

“In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes,” said Mr Zuckerberg.

For Meta employees in Ireland, the number of job losses in this round of layoffs is less than expected.

The Instagram and WhatsApp operator said it will cut around 12%, or 10,000 jobs, of its global workforce of more than 86,000 employees.

If this percentage was applied across the company’s worldwide operations, around 350 more Irish jobs would have been at risk of redundancy, as indicated by the Central Bank tech job losses tracker.

Prior to the cuts, Meta directly employed approximately 3,000 people across Ireland including its sites in Cork and in Dublin.

Sources have suggested other Big Tech firms in Ireland are poised to follow Meta and announce second rounds of layoffs this year amid an ongoing tech slowdown.

Meta, like many other tech firms, slowed hiring and reduced their workforce last year due to a slowdown brought about by volatile economic conditions and a post-pandemic e-commerce slump.