Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees, which could reshape more than a quarter of its global workforce. The tech giant, already at the center of the Trump administration's crackdown on employment-based immigration, confirmed Monday that eligible employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom would receive voluntary exit offers. Workers across areas including AI experiences, Copilot, finance, human resources, Xbox and Windows + Devices are eligible, while other divisions are excluded.
The timing of the buyout offer arrives after the Trump administration suspended Microsoft and seven other technology and consulting companies from the Labor Department's Permanent Labor Certification, or PERM, program. This program enables employers to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residence. Microsoft is one of the country's biggest users of the H-1B program, making its hiring practices particularly relevant as the Trump administration seeks to overhaul employment-based immigration.
Citizenship and Immigration Services showed Microsoft received 6,258 H-1B approvals in fiscal 2025, making it the third-largest sponsor identified in the report, behind Amazon and Meta. Earlier this month, Microsoft said that approximately 6,000 H-1B petitions it submitted in the last fiscal year were overwhelmingly connected to workers already at the company. The tech giant added that 80 percent were applications to extend or change the status of existing employees rather than hire new people.
It also said the remaining new-employee filings were for people already legally inside the United States and amounted to only about 1 percent of its U.S. workforce. Microsoft had 223,000 full-time employees worldwide as of June 30, meaning the roughly 60,000 people eligible for the buyback program could make up more than a quarter of its global workforce. According to TechCrunch, the terms will be similar to the company's standard severance package.
Eligible workers are at the vice president level and below on selected teams. Now that the buyback offers are available, employees have until the first week of December to decide whether to accept. The new program follows other layoffs this year.
Microsoft announced 4,800 job cuts in July, equivalent to roughly 2.1 percent of its global workforce, and also offered voluntary departures to around 9,000 U.S. employees. On October 8, the Labor Department announced that Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL would be suspended from the PERM program. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said Microsoft and Adobe were suspended because of "multiple active federal investigations." “Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers.
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