Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is planning mass layoffs affecting up to 10,000 of its employees.
If this goes through, it will be the fourth mass layoff by a tech giant in November alone, following over 15,000 job cuts by Stripe, Twitter, and Meta since the beginning of the month.
According to a New York Times report citing anonymous sources, the job cuts will target the devices group, including the team in charge of the Alexa voice assistant, the retail division, and human resources.
Amazon employs over 1.6 million people worldwide, so the reported 10,000 employees represent less than 1% of the company’s workforce.
Earlier warning
The report comes just weeks after Amazon warned of slow growth during the busy holiday season when it used to generate the most sales. According to Amazon, this is because rising prices have caused consumers and businesses to have less money to spend.
Amazon has spent much of this year adjusting to a sharp slowdown in e-commerce growth as consumers reverted to pre-pandemic habits. Amazon has postponed warehouse openings and halted retail hiring. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has pledged to streamline operations in the face of slowing sales growth and economic uncertainty.
Tough year for tech
With the recent layoffs, 2022 will become one of the most difficult years for global tech behemoths. After Stripe, America’s fintech behemoth announced 1,120 job cuts, Elon Musk fired 3,700 of Twitter’s 8,000 employees. Meta followed with a massive 11,000 layoffs, and Amazon is about to add another 10,000 to the workforce.
Unfortunately, analysts predict that the layoff frenzy will last until the first quarter of 2023 as the global economy continues to deteriorate.
