Microsoft is offering voluntary departure packages to approximately 60,000 employees in selected teams in the US, Canada, the UK and India. The eligible group represents about 27% of the company’s global workforce, although the figure is the number of people who can take the offer—not the number certain to leave.
The program, announced October 26, is open to employees through Microsoft’s internal level 70. That range includes general managers and some employees carrying vice-president titles, while corporate vice presidents are excluded. Employees have until early December to decide.
Reported terms from US offers set severance according to employee level, with continued equity vesting and temporary health coverage also included.
- Levels 64 and below: one week of base pay for every six months worked, capped at 39 weeks.
- Levels 65 through 67: two weeks of base pay for every six months worked, capped at 39 weeks.
- Level 68: a standard package worth 12 months of base pay.
The current offer does not include the extended health coverage that had been part of Microsoft’s voluntary retirement program earlier this year. Microsoft has said voluntary exits do not replace layoffs, leaving open the possibility of further workforce reductions after the decision window closes.
The move follows 4,800 job cuts in July and several hundred more in September, as Microsoft continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure. The scale of those investments contrasts with still-modest measured productivity gains from generative AI: an October update to the NBER study “Firm Data on AI,” based on responses from nearly 9,000 executives, reported average annual productivity growth of 0.2% over the previous three years.
The immediate unknown is how many eligible employees will take the package, and whether the voluntary program changes the outlook for additional cuts across Microsoft’s remaining teams.
