Facebook Laying Off 343 More Employees In NYC

NEW YORK CITY — Facebook has fewer friends in New York City's workforce.

A layoff notice filed with the state this week shows Facebook's parent company Meta plans to let go 343 employees across three Manhattan offices.

The layoffs follow a previous round of cuts in November that left 871 of Facebook's city workers without jobs. Together, the layoffs hint the social media giant's coronavirus pandemic-era expansion in the city is in trouble.

"Reason For Dislocation: Economic," the new notice states, as did the previous one in the fall.

Facebook in 2020 had signed a lease for space within the James A. Farley building, a sprawling edifice near Penn Station. The deal was hailed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio as the first major lease of the pandemic, and was expected to bring the company's total employees within the city to 10,000.

But Facebook and other tech giants have since faced tough times.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year said the company's wider expansion during COVID-19 shutdowns — which he undertook because he believed of expected permanent shifts in e-commerce — didn't pan out. He announced Meta would lay off 11,000 people, or about 13 percent of its workforce.

Zuckerberg in March then made clear "restructurings and layoffs" would be imminent.

"We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May," he wrote. "In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes."

Both rounds of Facebook's layoffs in New York City are expected to affect workers in the Farley building, according to their notices.

The layoffs will impact offices within these addresses, according to the most recent notice:

• 372 Ninth Ave.
• 770 Broadway
• 30 Hudson Yards

A Facebook representative declined to comment.