Microsoft to buyout 60,000 employees as Vance announces H-1B visa crackdown

The number represents more than a quarter of the approximately 223,000 employees the company reported as of June 30. Microsoft has not announced how many employees it expects to accept.

The Redmond-based company announced its Voluntary Exit Offer Monday, making eligible employees at level 70 and below within participating teams in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom eligible for financial support and career planning resources.

"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote. “It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs.”

Participation varies across Microsoft’s businesses. Coleman said some organizations are offering the program while others are not, depending on their priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs.

Microsoft told GeekWire that the package is equivalent to its standard severance, including pay based on tenure and level, continued stock vesting, health coverage for a fixed period and career transition services. Eligible employees have until the first week of December to decide.

The new offer follows an earlier voluntary retirement program. Approximately 30 percent of the roughly 8,750 eligible US employees accepted that offer, according to the outlet. Microsoft expects a smaller participation rate for the broader exit program, and said layoffs remain an option depending on business conditions.

The announcement also follows the Trump administration’s October 8 suspension of Microsoft from the Permanent Labor Certification program, known as PERM, amid an investigation into alleged abuse of foreign-worker programs. PERM is a Labor Department certification process generally required for certain employer-sponsored green cards. The suspension targeted that process and did not itself cancel employees’ existing H-1B visas.

“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vance said during the announcement.

According to figures presented by Attorney General Todd Blanche, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 while receiving approval for more than 6,000 H-1B visas and filing 3,682 PERM applications. Nearly 1,000 applications concerned the same positions as those held by laid-off American workers, according to the administration. “This announcement today should send and does send a strong signal to every single employer in the United States that the Trump Administration will not tolerate discrimination against American workers,” Blanche said.

Microsoft responded to the allegations by saying approximately 80 percent of its roughly 6,000 H-1B applications during the previous fiscal year concerned extensions or status changes for existing employees. “These were not to hire new people,” the company said.

Microsoft said the remaining filings concerned new employees already legally in the United States and represented approximately 1 percent of its US workforce.

The offer follows substantial workforce reductions earlier this year. In July, Microsoft announced approximately 4,800 job cuts, about 2.1 percent of its global workforce. 605 of those employees were based in Washington, including remote workers throughout the Puget Sound region. Those reductions primarily affected Microsoft’s Commercial and Xbox organizations.

Coleman said Monday that the company would continue helping employees develop skills and pursue internal opportunities as individual businesses adjust their staffing.

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee,” she wrote.