Amazon To Cut 10,000 Employees Beginning This Week: Report

Amazon has decided to cut about 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles starting this week, according to a report by Reuters.

Late on Monday, New York Times reported the same and that the cut would impact roughly 3 per cent of Amazon’s corporate staff. But a Reuters report says that the numbers may differ as the company assesses its priorities in business while taking forward the staff cut. 

One of the largest employers in the world, Amazon has over 1.5 million workers on its payroll globally and the layoff of 10,000 people would mean this to be company’s biggest in its 28-year existence.

The reduction of staff is due to uncertain macroeconmic environment faced by all tech companies currently.

The staff cut will apparently keep the spotlight on Amazon’s devices organisation, including voice assistant Alexa. The company also plans to focus on its retail division and human resources. 

The company earlier said that it would freeze incremental corporate hiring for several months.

News of Amazon staff cut comes on the heels of Meta’s announcement of laying off 11,000 employees and Twitter’s 3,700 job cut. Other tech companies including Snap, Lyft and Stripe have also laid off employees in the recent times.

Amazon had recently doubled down on cash compensation for its employees in the technology division citing “competitive labour market”.

The Seattle-headquartered company’s focus on its devices unit could be due to posting operating losses of more than USD 4 billion, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal last week.

Meanwhile, the value of Amazon’s shares has tumbled by more than 40 per cent this year. 

(Inputs from Reuters and New York Times)