--- title: "LinkedIn Cuts 875 Jobs in May 2026 | Metaintro" canonical: "https://www.metaintro.com/blog/linkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026" language: "en" author: "drashtigarach" published: "2026-05-13T17:49:37.000Z" modified: "2026-10-02T19:27:03.204Z" --- [Back to Blog](/blog) [News](/blog/tag/news)[Information](/blog/tag/information)[Layoffs](/blog/tag/layoffs) # LinkedIn Cuts 875 Jobs in May 2026 — Revenue Still Grew 12% LinkedIn layoffs 2026: Microsoft's professional network is cutting 5% of staff, about 875 jobs, despite 12% revenue growth. What it means for tech workers. [![Drashti Garach](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:40:40/q:72/plain/images/5719d740-e510-42bc-8017-e040d145f35f_1766029465094.png)Drashti Garach @DrashtiGarach](/blog/author/drashtigarach) [May 13, 2026](/blog/archive/2026/05)Updated October 2, 202612 min read ![LinkedIn Cuts 875 Jobs in May 2026 — Revenue Still Grew 12%](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:1200:675/q:78/plain/images/kai.7a5K0AnU.png) [https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=LinkedIn%20Cuts%20875%20Jobs%20in%20May%202026%20%E2%80%94%20Revenue%20Still%20Grew%2012%25&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=LinkedIn%20Cuts%20875%20Jobs%20in%20May%202026%20%E2%80%94%20Revenue%20Still%20Grew%2012%25&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026)[http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026)[https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026&title=LinkedIn%20Cuts%20875%20Jobs%20in%20May%202026%20%E2%80%94%20Revenue%20Still%20Grew%2012%25](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026&title=LinkedIn%20Cuts%20875%20Jobs%20in%20May%202026%20%E2%80%94%20Revenue%20Still%20Grew%2012%25)[mailto:?subject=LinkedIn%20Cuts%20875%20Jobs%20in%20May%202026%20%E2%80%94%20Revenue%20Still%20Grew%2012%25&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026](mailto:?subject=LinkedIn%20Cuts%20875%20Jobs%20in%20May%202026%20%E2%80%94%20Revenue%20Still%20Grew%2012%25&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Flinkedin-layoffs-microsoft-cuts-5-percent-workforce-2026) LinkedIn told staff on Wednesday it is cutting roughly 5% of its workforce, a reduction of about 875 jobs out of more than 17,500 employees, according to [Reuters and Bloomberg reports](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-13/microsoft-s-linkedin-is-cutting-jobs-in-latest-industry-cull). The Microsoft-owned professional network is making the cuts even though [LinkedIn revenue grew 12% year over year](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/tech-layoffs-ai-investment-roi-2026) in the most recent quarter. Sources close to the matter told Reuters the layoffs are not about [AI replacing jobs](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-layoffs-cover-story-2026), but about reorganizing around growth areas. It is the latest in a stretch of [tech-sector layoffs that has now pushed past 100,000 cuts](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/us-tech-sector-layoffs-mounting-2026) for the year, and it lands at a Microsoft unit that was, until this morning, considered one of the safest seats in Big Tech. ## Why is LinkedIn cutting 5% of its workforce despite 12% revenue growth? The headline numbers do not line up the way employees expected. LinkedIn pulled in a 12% revenue jump in the quarter ended March 31, per Microsoft's most recent securities filing, an acceleration over the prior quarter. By traditional measures, a business growing double digits does not lay people off. But LinkedIn leadership framed the cuts as a structural reset, not a financial one. CEO Ryan Roslansky's letter to employees cited shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth in certain product lines, and pointed to a desire to move to a flatter organisational structure, language echoed in [Bloomberg's coverage](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-13/microsoft-s-linkedin-is-cutting-jobs-in-latest-industry-cull) of the memo. The implicit argument is that the headline revenue figure hides slower-growing pockets underneath, and that those pockets are now carrying too much overhead. Translation for job seekers: even profitable, growing units inside Big Tech are no longer immune. The cuts at LinkedIn arrive after a wave of similar moves at sibling Microsoft units, including the company's [first voluntary buyout program in years](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/microsoft-first-voluntary-buyout-ai-shift) and a broader [executive shakeup across senior tech roles](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/microsoft-executive-departures-senior-tech-talent-2026). Microsoft has been moving dollars and headcount toward [AI infrastructure bets](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/microsoft-120-billion-data-center-gamble-construction-jobs-limbo) at an unprecedented pace, including a multi-billion-dollar build-out of data centers and a [Japan-focused training push](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/microsoft-10-billion-japan-ai-investment-1-million-engineers-2026) that targets a million engineers. LinkedIn is now caught in that same rebalance, with its budget effectively competing against Azure, Copilot, and the rest of the AI-first portfolio. The 5% figure also matters because it is a flatter, more diffuse cut than a single team being eliminated. Sources told Reuters and Stocktwits that engineering, product, marketing, and parts of LinkedIn's Global Business Organization, the sales arm, are all in scope. That spread suggests management is reshaping reporting lines and removing middle layers, not exiting any one product. Job seekers reading this should expect roughly the same playbook from other profitable but restructuring tech employers over the rest of 2026: across-the-board trims, manager-heavy cuts, and a quiet redirection of headcount budget toward AI-adjacent functions. ## What did Ryan Roslansky's memo actually say? The memo, summarized across Bloomberg and Reuters reporting, leans on three threads. First, customer behavior has shifted, with some buyers pulling back on the higher-margin recruiting tools and enterprise subscriptions LinkedIn sells to talent teams. Enterprise hiring teams have been notably tight on budget in 2026 as their own companies freeze headcount, which directly compresses demand for premium seats on LinkedIn's recruiter products. Second, certain revenue lines are growing slower than the platform's overall 12% headline, creating uneven internal pressure where some teams are hitting plan while others are missing it by double digits. Third, the company wants a flatter organization, which is corporate shorthand for fewer management layers, broader spans of control, and the elimination of director and senior-manager roles whose teams have shrunk over the past year. What the memo did not say is just as important. There was no claim that AI is replacing workers at LinkedIn. In fact, one Reuters source explicitly pushed back on that framing, telling the wire the layoffs are about reorganization, not automation. That is a notable carve-out in a year when [78,000-plus tech layoffs in Q1 alone](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/78557-tech-layoffs-q1-2026-ai-automation-workforce-cuts) have been pitched, fairly or not, as AI-driven. LinkedIn is publicly drawing a different line, even as its parent company invests aggressively in AI. The cleaner read is that LinkedIn has too many managers and too many people working on slowing product surfaces, and the company is willing to take the morale hit now rather than absorb the cost in the next fiscal year. For workers trying to read between the lines, the language matches what we have flagged in our [corporate euphemism decoder](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-layoffs-corporate-euphemism-decoder-2026): flatter organisational structure usually means thinning middle management, and shifts in customer behavior usually means specific product lines are losing momentum even when the overall top line looks healthy. Both phrases are designed to defuse the AI-replaces-jobs narrative that has dominated coverage of every other layoff round this year, and to keep the focus on internal structure rather than external automation. ## Which LinkedIn teams are most exposed in these layoffs? Reporting from multiple outlets converges on four broad buckets: engineering, product, marketing, and the Global Business Organization. None of these are full-team eliminations. Instead, expect proportional cuts inside each function as managers consolidate roles and trim spans of control. Some smaller adjacent groups, including parts of trust and safety, learning, and developer relations, are likely to feel proportionally larger cuts because their headcount is already small enough that a 5% trim translates into a meaningful percentage of the team. Engineering is interesting because LinkedIn has been hiring aggressively in [AI-adjacent engineering roles](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/software-engineering-jobs-surge-30-percent-67000-openings-ai-layoffs-2026) over the last 18 months, and engineering openings have surged across the broader sector. A 5% cut in this group likely lands hardest on maintenance, legacy infrastructure, and roles tied to slower-growing surfaces of the product. Workers building the company's newer AI recruiting features, the embedded copilots inside Recruiter, the conversational search layer, and the generative profile tools are probably safer, but not guaranteed. Engineers in legacy ads infrastructure, on-prem tooling, and older mobile surfaces should plan as if their role is in the bottom quartile of the function. Product is the function most directly exposed to shifts in customer behavior. Product managers attached to features that are not moving the metrics tend to be the first conversations in any flattening exercise. PMs on the Learning and Sales Navigator side, where growth has reportedly been uneven, are more exposed than PMs on the core Talent Solutions surface that drives the bulk of the 12% revenue acceleration. Marketing, similarly, tends to lose generalist and brand roles before performance and growth roles when budgets get re-pointed, and within marketing the most exposed seats are usually field, events, and partnerships. The Global Business Organization is where the math gets brutal. GBO is sales, account management, and customer success, and these are typically the largest functions at any enterprise SaaS company. A 5% cut applied across the whole company means GBO probably loses the most absolute headcount even if its percentage is in line with everyone else's. If you work in a recruiting tools sales pod or a regional account management group, this is the news you needed to plan for. Sales managers with shrinking books or quotas that have been missed two quarters running should expect to be in the first cohort of conversations. ## How does LinkedIn fit into the broader 2026 tech layoff wave? Year to date, tech layoffs have crossed the 100,000-cut mark, with [March alone topping 60,000 jobs](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/march-2026-layoffs-60620-ai-top-reason-challenger-report) per Challenger, Gray and Christmas. [Meta cut thousands in May](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/meta-layoffs-may-2026-ai-restructuring), [Oracle hit 30,000 in a single round](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/oracle-30000-layoffs-mass-email-big-tech-firing-trend-2026), [Snap eliminated 1,000 roles](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/snap-snapchat-layoffs-1000-jobs-ai-april-2026), [Coinbase cut 700](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/coinbase-700-layoffs-ai-pivot-2026), [McKinsey trimmed white-collar consulting roles](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/mckinsey-layoffs-2026-ai-white-collar-consulting), [Disney let go of 1,000](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/disney-1000-layoffs-josh-damaro-2026), and [GitLab announced its own May reduction](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/gitlab-layoffs-may-2026). [Block under Jack Dorsey is running an excellence framing](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/block-jack-dorsey-ai-layoffs-excellence-strategy-2026) on its cuts, [Freshworks pinned half its codebase to AI before letting 500 engineers go](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/freshworks-500-layoffs-ai-writes-half-code-tech-workers-2026), and [PayPal and Coinbase have leaned on AI-fintech framing](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/paypal-coinbase-layoffs-2026-ai-fintech-cuts). [Cloudflare](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/cloudflare-layoffs-2026) and [Cisco](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/cisco-chuck-robbins-layoffs-ai-bubble-hiring-2026) have also entered the layoff cycle in the past quarter, and [GM has trimmed IT workers](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/gm-layoffs-it-workers-ai-2026) under an AI banner. LinkedIn's announcement is unusual in this lineup for two reasons. First, the company is still posting healthy double-digit revenue growth, while most of the other 2026 cuts have come paired with at least some softness in the financials. Second, leadership is explicitly not citing AI as the reason. Most of the year's high-profile cuts have leaned on AI as the rationale, even when the underlying math was more about cost-cutting than automation. Reuters reporting that LinkedIn is reorganizing around growth areas without an AI-replacement story is, in 2026, a relatively honest framing, and it stands out from the wave of excellence memos that have papered over more straightforward cost cuts at other companies. [Prediction markets are still pricing in a 92% chance that 2026 tech layoffs surpass 2025](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/prediction-markets-92-percent-odds-2026-tech-layoffs-surpass-2025-job-seekers), and the LinkedIn news pushes that number further along. The total displaced workforce across tech is now within striking distance of the worst years on record, and the layoff drumbeat is increasingly being normalized as a steady-state feature of the industry rather than a recession signal. That framing matters for job seekers, because it suggests the next 12 months will keep producing 5%-and-under cuts at otherwise healthy companies. ## What should LinkedIn employees and other tech workers do next? If you work at LinkedIn and have not yet heard your status, the first 48 hours matter. Pull your last two performance reviews, capture screenshots of your contribution metrics, and back up any work product you would want to reference in interviews. Microsoft severance packages have historically been generous compared to industry baselines, and Bloomberg's reporting suggests this round will follow the standard template. Do not sign anything binding in the first sitting, and do not agree to a separation date before you have read the full package and, ideally, had an employment lawyer scan the non-compete and non-solicit language. If you are reading this from another tech employer wondering whether you are next, the more useful read is structural. Even profitable, growing units are being flattened in 2026. The defensive move is to make sure your role maps to a [growth area, not a maintenance area](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/2026-career-skills-stay-employable-constant-change), and that your skills [layer onto AI rather than around it](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/layer-ai-skills-existing-career-without-starting-over). Workers in [hiring categories where openings are accelerating](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/americas-frozen-labor-market-hiring-slow-layoffs-low-2026), applied AI, forward-deployed engineering, and applied data, have the most resilient positioning, and managers who have demonstrated that they can ship with smaller teams are also harder to cut. For people exiting tech entirely, the [labor market data shows hiring is slow but layoffs are still low historically](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/us-labor-market-layoff-drought-not-deluge-2026-data), which means a six-to-nine-month search window is realistic for senior roles. Use that window for targeted applications, not a flood of generic ones. The [opaque, impersonal hiring process](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/opaque-impersonal-hiring-process-jobseeker-frustration-2026) is the bigger drag in 2026, not the absolute number of open jobs, and candidates who lean on warm intros, targeted outreach, and tightly scoped portfolios tend to land first. The smartest move right now is to stop waiting for clarity from any single employer. LinkedIn's announcement, paired with the broader March layoffs that topped 60,000 cuts across tech, suggests that even the platforms built to help workers find jobs are reshaping themselves. Keep your skills inventory current, refresh your professional profile every six weeks, and treat any internal restructure announcement as a prompt to start quiet conversations outside your company before they become urgent ones. ## People Also Asked ### Q: How many people are losing their jobs at LinkedIn? A: LinkedIn is cutting roughly 5% of its global workforce, which translates to about 875 jobs out of a base of more than 17,500 employees. The company has not yet confirmed a precise headcount number, and the totals could shift slightly as managers finalize role-level decisions over the coming days. Reuters and Bloomberg are the primary sources for the 5% figure, and both cite people familiar with the plan rather than a public company filing. ### Q: Is the LinkedIn layoff caused by AI? A: According to a Reuters source briefed on the plan, no. The layoffs are framed as a reorganization to focus headcount on growth areas, not an effort to replace workers with AI. That is a notable break from the dominant 2026 layoff narrative, in which most large tech employers have cited AI investment or AI-driven productivity as their explicit rationale. LinkedIn leadership pointed to shifts in customer behavior and a flatter organizational structure instead. ### Q: What severance is Microsoft offering laid-off LinkedIn employees? A: Microsoft and LinkedIn have not published the specifics of this round's severance package, but the parent company has historically offered packages that include several weeks of base pay per year of service, accelerated equity vesting on a portion of unvested grants, continued health benefits for a set period, and outplacement services. Affected employees should review the full package before signing anything, and should pay particular attention to non-compete and non-solicitation clauses that may affect their next move. Looking for your next opportunity? 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