Meta layoffs continued this week as the corporate minimize greater than 1,000 jobs in its Actuality Labs division. The tech big is eliminating roughly 10% of that unit because it shifts assets from metaverse initiatives to AI-powered wearables and cellphone options, in keeping with Bloomberg.
The cuts comply with the corporate’s elimination of about 3,600 staff, roughly 5% of its international workforce, by means of performance-based terminations in 2025. Since 2022, Meta has shed tens of hundreds of roles.
The optimism vs. proof downside
Meta’s newest layoffs spotlight a rising problem for CHROs throughout industries: being requested to execute layoffs primarily based on investments and enterprise plans that haven’t but delivered returns.
At many corporations, this can be a dialog overshadowed by synthetic intelligence. Based on Gartner analysis, only one% of layoffs within the first half of 2025 resulted from AI truly growing worker productiveness. As an alternative, corporations are slicing headcount in anticipation of future AI beneficial properties, inserting HR leaders in an inconceivable place.
“We’re seeing organizations cut back their workforce primarily based on optimism about AI’s potential, not proof of its efficiency,” says Kaelyn Lowmaster, director within the Gartner HR observe. “In some circumstances, corporations will find yourself needing to rehire for roles they’ve minimize.”
Learn extra: ‘Quiet firing’ and layoffs could take a toll on U.S. employees in 2026
The expertise remix problem
Meta’s state of affairs illustrates the truth of workforce planning complexity. The corporate invested billions in its metaverse imaginative and prescient, constructed groups round that technique and is now dismantling these investments to guess on AI {hardware}.
For CHROs, this creates two challenges. First, leaders should execute layoffs in a manner that doesn’t injury the group’s employment model, notably when the strategic rationale could shift once more. Second, they should lead what Gartner calls “expertise remix” efforts. These make sure the workforce can truly help evolving enterprise objectives fairly than merely slicing headcount and hoping AI fills the gaps.
“Essentially the most profitable CHROs in 2026 will deal with sustainable workforce planning that accounts for AI’s precise impression, not its promised potential,” Lowmaster says.
