Jonathan Weiss/Dreamstime

Amazon to Layoff 10,000 Employees: Report

Nov. 15, 2022
The layoffs would follow an aggressive hiring spree: Amazon doubled its workforce from the first quarter of 2020 to 1.62 million employees two years later.

Amazon is preparing to lay off as many as 10,000 employees, The New York Times reported on Monday, making the e-commerce behemoth the latest tech giant to unleash a large-scale redundancy plan.

This would represent a little less than one percent of the group's total payroll, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of September, not counting seasonal workers who are recruited during periods of increased activity like the Christmas holidays.

The Times report said the affected positions will be located in Amazon’s devices department, the retail division and human resources.

The distribution by country was not specified.

The report said that the total number of employees laid off could change, but if confirmed, it would be the largest round of firings in the history of the 28-year-old company founded by Jeff Bezos.

The layoffs would follow an aggressive hiring spree. With business booming due to the coronavirus pandemic, as cooped up people turned in earnest to online shopping, Amazon doubled its workforce from the first quarter of 2020 to 1.62 million employees two years later.

But with the economy souring, two weeks ago Amazon announced a hiring freeze and its workforce has already decreased compared to the beginning of the year.

Contacted by AFP, Amazon did not respond immediately to a request to comment.

Last week, Meta, Facebook's parent company, announced it was cutting 11,000 jobs, or about 13% of its workforce.

Online payment company Stripe and car-hailing app Lyft, also recently reported big layoffs. Twitter, freshly acquired by Elon Musk, earlier this month fired about half of its 7,500 employees.

Copyright 2022, Agence France-Presse

Popular Sponsored Recommendations

Electric Vehicles Spark New Opportunities in the Automotive Industry

Dec. 4, 2023
Automakers have increased plans to produce Electric Vehicles to meet customer demand for low emissions. With this radical shift, new opportunities and challenges for the auto ...

Food and Beverage 2024 Trends and Outlook for North America

Oct. 29, 2023
Ready to hear what 200 of your peers said are the top challenges and opportunities in 2024? Don’t fall behind. Uncover actionable insights to better prepare for 2024 in this whitepaper...

The Benefits of Continuous Thermal Monitoring

Oct. 17, 2023
Read this eBook to learn more about collecting and using data intelligently to improve performance.

The New Employee Experience Strategy for the Everywhere Workplace

June 14, 2023
HR and Comms leaders are challenged with managing a distributed workforce. Read this ebook for best practices for rebuilding the employee experience and staying connected and ...

Voice your opinion!

To join the conversation, and become an exclusive member of IndustryWeek, create an account today!