Meta’s latest round of layoffs has had a major impact on the Seattle region, with 1,395 employees in King County losing their jobs, according to a recent filing submitted to the state last week.
Although Meta is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company has built a significant presence in the Seattle area over the years. Meta rapidly expanded its footprint in the Puget Sound region during the pandemic, particularly as it increased investments in virtual reality and metaverse-related projects.
At its peak, Meta’s local workforce grew to around 8,800 employees, making the Seattle area one of the company’s largest hubs outside California. The region became central to Meta’s virtual reality ambitions, with teams focused on hardware, software, and immersive technology development.
READ: Meta builds AI Mark Zuckerberg for employee access (April 13, 2026)
The layoffs were spread across several Meta offices in Washington state, highlighting the scale of the company’s restructuring efforts in the region.
According to the filing, 259 employees were laid off from two Seattle offices, while 699 jobs were cut at the company’s Bellevue office and 206 positions were eliminated in Redmond. Another 231 remote employees across Washington state were also affected. Engineering and product management roles were among the hardest hit.
Meta informed employees about the layoffs on May 20, though their official separation date is July 22, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed Friday with the Washington State Employment Security Department.
The company is offering severance packages that include 16 weeks of base pay, along with an additional two weeks for every year of continuous service at Meta.
READ: ‘Sad to say goodbye’: Zuckerberg addresses laid off employees at Meta via memo (May 21, 2026)
The cuts are part of a broader wave of downsizing across the tech industry, as companies continue to reduce costs and reassess hiring levels following years of rapid pandemic-era expansion.
The latest layoffs are also part of a wider restructuring effort underway at Meta that began earlier this year. In May, the company started notifying employees about job cuts through internal emails sent to roughly 10% of its 78,000-person workforce, according to a memo from Meta HR chief Janelle Gale.
Reports at the time suggested that workforce reductions and internal restructuring could eventually affect nearly 20% of employees by the end of the year. Alongside the layoffs, Meta has also been reorganizing teams as it deepens its focus on artificial intelligence. The company plans to move nearly 7,000 employees into AI-focused initiatives while reducing layers of management across departments.
Employees across the company have faced months of uncertainty since Meta first announced the cuts on April 23. In an internal memo circulated at the time, the company said the layoffs were intended to make operations “more efficient” while supporting long-term investments in AI and emerging technologies.