NEW YORK 鈥� McDonald鈥檚 has closed its U.S. offices through Wednesday and told its corporate staff to work remotely as it prepares to announce a round of layoffs.
In a memo to workers posted on the website TheLayoff.com, the Chicago-based burger giant said it wanted to 鈥渆nsure the comfort and confidentiality of our people during the notification period鈥� and would hold all notification meetings virtually. It told international corporate staff to follow guidance in their particular regions.
The company said in the memo that the layoffs are intended to make McDonald's more efficient.
"We have a clear opportunity ahead of us to get faster and more effective at solving problems for our customers and people and to globally scale our successful market innovations at speed," the company said.
McDonald's declined to comment on the memo or the layoffs on Monday. The memo was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Though the U.S. labor market remains strong, layoffs have been mounting, r, where many companies over-hired after a pandemic boom. IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook parent Meta, Twitter and DoorDash have all announced layoffs in recent months.
There have been cuts .
Most of those job cuts are at corporate offices. There are still shortages of workers to fill service jobs, such as those at McDonald's restaurants.
Policymakers at the Federal Reserve have forecast the unemployment rate may rise to 4.6% by the end of this year, a sizable increase historically associated with recessions.
McDonald's has more than 150,000 employees in corporate roles and in company-owned restaurants. About 70% of those employees are based outside the United States.
McDonald's shares rose just under 1% Monday. The was flat at $23.2 billion for the full year in 2022, but its net income fell 18%, partly due to the sale of its business in Russia.
McDonald's that layoffs would be coming as it tried to get more nimble and break down walls between its global markets. In a January memo to employees, McDonald's President and CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company was evaluating roles and staffing levels in various parts of the company.
鈥淲e have historically been very decentralized in some areas where we reinvent the wheel way too often,鈥� Kempczinski said during a January conference call with investors. 鈥淎nd I think the other thing I鈥檝e seen is we haven鈥檛 been as sharp around our global priorities, and so there鈥檚 been proliferation of priorities.鈥�
In one market, Kempczinski said he had recently discovered a list of 300 separate priorities.
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This story corrects a previous version that said McDonald's has 150,000 corporate employees. It has 150,000 employees in corporate roles and in company-owned restaurants.
Dee-ann Durbin, The Associated Press
