Layoffs at LinkedIn: Laid off more than 600 workers, about 3% of the workforce

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – LinkedIn announced Monday that it is laying off hundreds of employees, representing about 3% of the social media company’s workforce.

The Microsoft-owned career network is cutting around 668 positions across its development, product, talent and finance teams.

“Talent transition is a difficult but necessary and regular part of running our company,” the company said in a statement.

The job cuts follow more than 700 more layoffs announced by LinkedIn in May, as well as thousands more this year by parent company Microsoft, which has owned the professional networking service since buying it for $26 billion in 2016.

LinkedIn continues to grow and announced that its annual revenue topped $15 billion for the first time in the fiscal year that ended in June. The service, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, makes money from advertising on the platform as well as from users who pay to subscribe to premium features.

LinkedIn says it has about 19,500 employees.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft had 221,000 full-time employees worldwide in July, more than half of them in the United States

Thousands more will be added as part of the $69 billion takeover of California video game maker Activision Blizzard, which closed on Friday. At the end of last year, Activision Blizzard said it had 13,000 employees.