Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 workers but says layoffs remain an option
The company expects fewer employees to accept the new offer than took its earlier retirement package, while giving participating teams more flexibility to reshape their staffing.
Microsoft is opening a new route out of the company for as many as 60,000 employees, expanding its use of voluntary buyouts as it reorganizes parts of its business and commits tens of billions of dollars to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The offer, announced in an internal memo on Monday, reaches employees in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India who work in participating teams. It covers roughly a quarter of Microsoft’s 223,000-person workforce and extends to some executives, a significant expansion of a retirement program the company introduced earlier this year.
The new initiative gives Microsoft a way to reduce or redirect staffing without relying entirely on layoffs. But it comes after thousands of job cuts in 2025 and 2026, and the company has made clear that voluntary departures will not replace involuntary reductions when business conditions warrant them.
Microsoft has not said how many employees it expects to accept the offer. It anticipates a much lower participation rate than the roughly 30% who took its spring retirement package, which was restricted to a smaller group of longer-serving U.S. employees.
“This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s chief people officer, wrote in the memo. She said the program also gives participating business units another way to adjust their workforces to changing needs.
The company eliminated about 4,800 positions in July and cut hundreds more in September, following more than 15,000 job cuts in 2025. The July reductions affected its commercial and Xbox businesses as Microsoft sought to reorganize sales operations and address challenges in gaming.
The company has also been changing its operations in Israel. In October, CTech reported that about 50 employees on Microsoft’s Copilot Studio team had been summoned to pre-dismissal hearings as part of a wider organizational shift, with about half expected to remain in roles within the Israeli research and development center. The Israeli changes are part of the broader restructuring, though they are separate from the newly announced voluntary exit offer.
Unlike the retirement program introduced this spring, the new offer has no minimum age or tenure requirement, and employee performance is not a factor in eligibility. It extends up to level 70 on Microsoft’s internal job scale, covering general managers and some employees with vice president titles, but not corporate vice presidents.
The program is not open to everyone. Business leaders will decide whether their teams participate according to their priorities, customer commitments and staffing needs. Microsoft’s sales organization is excluded, as are some engineering teams and corporate functions.
“There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee,” Coleman wrote.
Eligible employees will receive the details by email and have until the first week of December to decide. The package is equivalent to Microsoft’s standard severance arrangements, including base pay based on tenure and level, continued stock vesting, healthcare coverage for a fixed period and career-transition services. It does not include the extended healthcare coverage that helped make the earlier retirement program attractive.
