Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees

Microsoft is giving about 60,000 employees a chance to leave voluntarily with a package attached. That’s more than a quarter of its roughly 223,000-person global workforce, and the offer is open only in the U.S., Canada, Britain and India.

The program, called the Voluntary Exit Offer, was announced by chief people officer Amy Coleman in a memo to staff on Monday, then posted on Microsoft’s blog. Eligible employees go up to level 70, which means up to vice president. But this isn’t a companywide sweep. Bloomberg says the participating groups include Xbox, Windows, Copilot and finance, while parts of sales, marketing and data center staff are out.

The terms are supposed to resemble Microsoft’s standard severance and include financial support plus career planning resources. People who take it need to decide by early December and leave at the end of the year. Coleman framed it as a new option for workers who are already thinking about moving on, and as a way for the company to adjust its headcount to changing needs.

It’s new, but not exactly unprecedented. In the spring, Microsoft offered a voluntary retirement program to long-serving U.S. employees for the first time in its history, and more than 30 percent of those eligible took it. Then came July’s cut of about 4,800 jobs, mostly in Xbox and commercial sales. Last year, the company cut about 15,000 positions in two waves.

The reason is familiar too: AI spending. Microsoft is sinking huge sums into data centers and chips, and expects capital spending of about $175 billion in calendar 2026. Voluntary departures soften the personnel bill without the public spectacle of a mass layoff. Investors will get a first look at how all of that plays together when Microsoft reports first-quarter fiscal 2027 results after the market closes on Wednesday.