Amazon ‘plans to cut 10,000 jobs’ this week – roughly 1% of its global workforce

Amazon executives will lay off thousands of workers with just weeks to go before the busy holiday season, as the tech sector braces for a recession.

According to the New York Timesthe online retailer plans to lay off 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs as early as this week in what would be the largest job loss in the company’s history.

The cuts will primarily target Amazon’s devices, including voice assistant Alexa, sources familiar with the aforementioned discussions, as well as retail and human resources.

The move comes as the company reportedly lost $1 trillion over the year after its shares plummeted last week.

It remains unclear exactly how many jobs will be lost and whether the layoffs will affect only those in the United States or worldwide.

But if the company goes ahead with its proposal to cut 10,000 jobs, it would lose about 3 percent of Amazon’s workforce — though the cuts would represent only less than 1 percent of the global workforce of more than 1.5 million, which is mostly consists of employees per hour. .

With the announcement, Amazon has become just the latest tech giant to announce massive layoffs — as Apple CEO Tim Cook says his company has also frozen hires.

If the company goes ahead with its proposal to cut 10,000 jobs, it would lose about 3 percent of Amazon’s corporate employees

As of Monday morning, the company was trading at $98.81, down 42 percent from the same time last year

The proposed layoffs mark a dramatic turn of events for Amazon, which had seen its most profitable era during the Covid pandemic when people around the world were forced to stay at home.

It doubled its workforce in just two years and put its huge revenues into new projects.

And in a bid to hire even more workers earlier this year, Amazon more than doubled its cash compensation limit for tech workers, citing “a particularly competitive job market.”

But in their late September quarterly report, executives warned investors that growth could weaken — possibly to its lowest point since 2001 — amid record high inflation.

Last week, the Times reported, Amazon executives met with institutional investors as the stock plunged to its lowest level since the early days of the pandemic, costing the company $1 trillion.

As of Monday morning, the company was trading at $98.81, down 42 percent from the same time last year.

Jassy became CEO of the company last year and tried to cut spending

Sources say CEO Andy Jassy was already looking for ways to discount costs for the ever-expanding tech giant before considering the layoffs.

After becoming CEO of the company last year, formerly head of its cloud computing business, he immediately backed down on a proposed warehouse expansion.

In the months that followed, he also closed initiatives such as Amazon Care, a service that provides primary and emergency health care that never had enough customers, shut down, or at least phased out; Scout, the cooler-sized delivery robot; and Fabric.com, a subsidiary that sold sewing supplies.

And from April to September, the Times reports, Amazon cut its workforce by nearly 80,000 — primarily by cutting the number of employees per hour — and froze the hiring of several smaller teams in September.

In October, Amazon stopped filling more than 10,000 job openings in its retail business, before announcing a few weeks ago that it was halting company-wide hiring.

One of the initiatives that Jassy is said to have aborted is Scout, a delivery robot that was running the company

He also apparently shut down Amazon Care – a service that provides primary and urgent healthcare that never got enough customers

But it was the devices from Amazon and retail departments that insiders have long believed most at risk of slashing.

Amazon’s Alexa and its associated products were the company’s priority as it sought to compete with Apple’s Siri, doubling the workforce on Alexa and Echo products from 2017 to 2018.

It has since sold hundreds of Alexa-enabled devices, even as company executives have said the products are low-margin.

In 2018, Echo and Alexa cost the company about $5 billion.

As a result, when Amazon introduced its new devices at an annual event this fall, there wasn’t as much fanfare as in years past.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s retail business, which covers its physical and online presence, has been under financial strain since its massive expansion during the pandemic, the Times reports.

Company executives have said they have reversed the expansion, telling investors last month they see consumer uncertainty.

“We’re realistic that there are several factors that weigh on people’s wallets,” Brian Olsavsky, the chief of finance, told investors.

He said the company wasn’t sure where spending was headed amid historic inflation rates, but said “we’re ready for different outcomes.”