According to reports citing people familiar with the matter, on Wednesday Microsoft Corp will cut jobs in a number of engineering divisions, as the company joins the ranks of tech stocks scaling back their expenses in preparation for an economic downturn and the slump in demand it will produce.

The size of the cutbacks was not reported, however a person familiar with the matter said the reduction will be significant in comparison to other rounds of layoffs at Microsoft over the previous year. Those previous cuts affected less than 1% of the company’s 200,000 strong workforce.

The most recent workforce reductions at the software giant were in October and July, as the company eliminated open positions and various groups saw new hiring paused. Unlike other tech giants, such as Amazon.com Inc., Salesforce Inc., and Meta Platforms Inc., which cut jobs by the thousands over the past few months, Microsoft has approached the prospect of downsizing in response to worsening global economic situation and a protracted reduction in demand more gingerly.

Microsoft shares, which fell 23% over the previous year, were roughly stable at $240.16 by 3:06 PM New York time on Tuesday.

Among other reports, Sky News reported the software maker would cut 11,000 jobs or about 5% of the company’s workforce, while Insider reported that Microsoft’s recruiting staff was set to be reduced by up to a third.

In the third fiscal quarter Microsoft forecast that it would report a sales gain of 2% in its earnings report on January 24th. If accurate, it will be the slowest gain in revenue going back to fiscal year 2017. The company’s cloud computing business has fueled tremendous growth since then. However over the past year, even that business has been beginning to slump.

Regardless of its slowing revenues, Microsoft has been slower than other tech giants to slash its workforce to cut costs. Amazon, a Microsoft competitor in the cloud sector, is in the process of cutting 18,000 positions, marking the largest force reduction in the company’s history. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms began widespread layoffs last fall, while at Twitter, Elon Musk cut over half the company’s workforce. Meanwhile Salesforce, the cloud software company, cut about 10% of its workforce earlier this month.