Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed Meta will be reducing its employee numbers for the first time in the company’s 18-year history, outlining drastic cuts across every department.

Zuckerberg announced the plans during a weekly Q&A session with employees.

Meta has frozen all hiring because “we want to make sure we’re not adding people to teams where we don’t expect to have roles next year”, he explained.

The company will restructure some teams, and reduce budgets across most teams. Zuckerberg said Meta will be “somewhat smaller” in 2023.

“For the first 18 years of the company, we basically grew quickly basically every year, and then more recently our revenue has been flat to slightly down for the first time,” he explained.

Individual teams will be responsible for their own “headcount changes” which could include having to “manage out people who aren’t succeeding.”

“I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilised by now,” Zuckerberg said.

“But from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively.”

Meta shares fell 3.7 per cent after Bloomberg’s report. Shares are down 60 per cent this year.

Meta announced earlier this year it would slow hiring. In July, Zuckerberg said Meta would “steadily reduce headcount growth,” adding “many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas.”

Meta had more than 83,500 employees at the end of FY22.

Zuckerberg said Thursday that the company would be “somewhat smaller” by the end of 2023.