The e-commerce behemoth Amazon is reportedly planning a large-scale redundancy plan to lay off approximately 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles starting this week.
According to the report based on people with knowledge of the matter, although this would represent a little less than one percent of the tech giant’s total payroll, the planned cuts would be the largest in the Jeff Bezos-founded company’s 28-year history and would primarily impact its devices organization, retail division, and human resources.
Amazon announced a hiring freeze two weeks ago and its workforce has already decreased compared to the beginning of the year.
At the end of September, Amazon had 1.54 million employees worldwide not counting seasonal workers who are recruited during periods of increased activity such as the Christmas or Easter holidays.
The report also said the distribution by country was not specified, noting that the total number of employees laid off could change.
The report comes at the start of the holiday shopping season, which is critical for Amazon, but weeks ago the e-commerce giant warned of a slowdown in growth for the period when it used to generate the highest sales because, as Amazon said, consumers and businesses have less money to spend due to rising prices.
Amazon was usually increasing headcount to meet demand during the busy holiday season but as the company confronts slowing sales and a gloomy global economy, its CEO Andy Jassy has been in cost-cutting mode to preserve cash.
With the economy souring, Amazon is only the latest tech company to brace for a potential economic downturn by making deep cuts to its employee base after Twitter cut roughly 50% of its 7,500-strong workforce last week, following its sale to Elon Musk, while Facebook’s parent company Meta announced it was cutting about 13 percent of its workforce or 11,000 jobs.
Car-hailing app Lyft and online payment company Stripe also reported big layoffs recently.
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