Facebook parent company Meta Platforms on Tuesday announced that it would lay off roughly 10,000 employees in the coming months in its second round of job cuts.

In November, Meta had sacked 11,000 employees.

Sharing the latest update in a Facebook post, Meta Chief Executive Office Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said that the company would flatten layers of middle management and close around 5,000 job openings without hiring.

“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” Zuckerberg said. “My hope is to make these org[anisational] changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead.”

The CEO announced that jobs will be cut in the recruitment teams first, followed by restructuring and layoffs in its technology groups in late April. Business teams will face layoffs in May, he added.

“After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group,” Zuckerberg said.

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Meta, which is plowing billions of dollars annually to build the metaverse, has struggled with a post-coronavirus pandemic slump.

In response, Zuckerberg has promised to turn 2023 into the “year of efficiency”, reported Reuters. With the latest round of layoffs, Meta is expecting expenses this year to fall between $86 billion and $92 billion, lower than the previous forecast of $89 billion to $95 billion, according to the news agency.

Besides Meta, other major technology companies that are also suffering due to the coronavirus-induced economic downturn, have announced a string of job cuts that began last year.

Social media company Twitter had laid off 50% of its workers across the world in November. In the same month, online retail giant Amazon had also announced 10,000 layoffs. On January 5, the e-commerce company had announced it will lay off more than 18,000 employees that included the November cuts.

On January 18, technology company Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees.