Amazon intends to fire about 10,000 workers. The New York Times claims that the layoff will start as soon as this week. The Amazon devices division, which includes Alexa, the company’s in-house personal assistant, will be the main target of the job layoffs.
Although they haven’t been officially announced, the layoffs might be the most in the e-commerce company’s history. If Amazon fires 10,000 workers, that would amount to about 3% of the company’s overall corporate workforce and less than 1% of its more than 1.5 million strong global workforce.
As the US and the rest of the world prepare for economic turmoil, Amazon is not the only tech company to announce layoffs. Meta stated this week that it is laying off more than 11,000 people. In recent months, Lyft, Stripe, and Snapchat have all let go of staff members. Although things haven’t been great for those who are still employed by the company, Twitter also cut the number of employees in half.
The holiday season has always been a time of stability for Amazon. But due to the weak economy, the company already put a freeze on corporate hiring this year.
Amazon increased its workforce by a factor of two over the past two years as the pandemic grew the e-commerce industry. However, as a result of inflation and cost-cutting measures, Amazon’s growth slowed to its slowest pace in twenty years. Similar circumstances led Meta to realign its hardware business’ priorities.
Despite the fact that Amazon has sold thousands of Alexa-enabled products, the company’s revenue margin is quite low. Amazon instead views these items as a way for customers to interact with the Amazon universe, where they are more likely to make other purchases.
The energy crisis, slow economic growth, and high inflation are a few of the causes of the significant tech job losses.
