Australian employees at LinkedIn have been caught up in the Microsoft-owned platform’s global job cuts, as the company moves to tighten costs.
The Australian redundancies are understood to total about 10 roles and form part of a global workforce reduction reported by Reuters to wipe out about 875 jobs.
The global cuts represent a reduction of more than 17,500 full-time staff across LinkedIn’s workforce.
Australian leadership impacted
Two sources confirmed that some members of LinkedIn’s Australian leadership team were among those who lost their jobs.
“Australian leadership [at LinkedIn] has been gutted,” one source anonymously told Reuters.
The specific teams affected in Australia have not been confirmed.
A LinkedIn spokesperson disputed the 5% figure when contacted, Reuters reports, but did not provide further detail.
“As part of our regular business planning, we’ve implemented organisational changes to best position ourselves for future success,” the spokesperson said.
Cuts come despite revenue growth
LinkedIn’s latest 2024 disclosures indicate the company employs about 350 staff locally, with offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
The cuts come almost a year after LinkedIn reduced roles in its Australian operations, primarily across editorial teams.
This time, local editorial teams are understood to have been spared. The job losses come despite LinkedIn reporting stronger revenue growth. Microsoft’s most recent financials show LinkedIn posted a 12% year-on-year revenue increase in its latest quarter.
AI and costs behind restructure
Jessica Jensen
LinkedIn Chief Marketing Officer Jessica Jensen told staff in an internal memo that the changes were necessary as “growth is more competitive, infrastructure costs continue to rise and AI is reshaping how work gets done.”
The memo, first reported by Business Insider, outlined three areas driving the restructure: reducing paid media and program spending, focusing investment on higher-return markets, and doubling down on growth areas, including AI-powered hiring tools, LinkedIn Premium, and small-business offerings.
Jensen also said LinkedIn would consolidate teams doing similar work and embed AI tools and workflows to accelerate output.
“Our organisational changes are across three areas,” Jensen wrote, adding the company would “embrace new AI-enabled tools and workflows that allow our human creativity and judgment to go further, faster.”
Tech layoffs continue
The LinkedIn cuts come amid a wider wave of layoffs across the technology sector.
Cisco announced an AI-driven restructuring affecting about 4,000 roles, while Block, WiseTech, Atlassian, and Coinbase also cited AI productivity gains as part of their job cuts earlier this year.
Layoff-tracking site Layoffs.fyi has tallied more than 103,000 technology sector roles eliminated globally so far in 2026, nearing the 124,000 cuts recorded across all of 2025.
Microsoft has also cut close to 7,000 employees this year, or around 3% of its workforce, and has offered voluntary retirement buyouts to about 7% of its US staff.