Washington Post shed roughly half of its staffers in recent years

The Washington Post has become a much smaller news organization because of several rounds of layoffs and voluntary buyouts.

At an employee town hall Wednesday, one week after the paper underwent a brutal round of layoffs, Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray said roughly 1,300 total staffers remain, according to The Guardian's Jeremy Barr, a former Post media reporter.

In October 2023, the Post itself reported it had employed "about 2,500 people across the entire company" at the time.

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The number of staffers at The Washington Post has shed by roughly half in recent years. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The number of journalists in the Post newsroom has taken a worse beating. Murray said that 400 people stayed in what he called a "well-stocked newsroom." But in 2022, the Post newsroom reportedly had 1,000 journalists.

While Murray told staffers he doesn't anticipate more layoffs, he acknowledged he couldn't be certain that there wouldn't be.

The Washington Post did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

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Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray held a town hall Monday after the paper suffered a brutal round of layoffs. (Robert Miller/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Last week, Murray delivered the highly-anticipated news that hundreds of Post staffers would be dismissed. Several departments, including Sports, Books and Metro were gutted, as well as its foreign correspondents and photojournalists.

Speaking with Fox News Digital, Murray acknowledged "morale has been a challenge at the Post for a while."

"The Post has been dealing with different kinds of problems for some number of years now," Murray said. "We want to be in a different period, [after] this painful exercise, and that's a period of collaboration, growth, innovation and reinventing the place for the future." 

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The Washington Post gutted several departments, including its sports desk as part of last week's layoffs.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

On Saturday, Washington Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis abruptly resigned after a two-year stint at the paper as critics slammed his absence during the painful layoffs while drawing outrage after he was spotted at a pre-Super Bowl event in San Francisco.

The Post announced that Jeff D’Onofrio, who joined the paper in June 2025 as its chief financial officer, was taking over as acting CEO and publisher effective immediately.

The paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, has also taken heat as critics accuse him of being disinterested in saving the paper he bought more than a decade ago.

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Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.