Amazon confirmed on Thursday that it was laying off staff, after days of rumors that the e-commerce behemoth was set to roll out large-scale redundancy plans amid a tough economic climate. The company will become
“The economy is in a challenging place and we’ve hired quickly over the past several years,” Chief Executive Andy Jessee wrote in an internal memo posted on Amazon’s website.
US media have previously reported that the platform and its various branches will lay off around 10,000 employees.
Jassi did not confirm the figures, but said the process had already begun and would continue early next year.
The first teams affected were those working with the brand’s electronic devices such as Kindle e-readers. Physical stores will also be affected.
“The role will further decline as leaders continue to make adjustments,” he wrote.
“These decisions will be shared with affected employees and organizations in early 2023. We have not yet concluded how many other roles will be affected.”
In the nearly 18 months he’s been CEO, Jesse said, “This is without a doubt the hardest decision we’ve ever made.”
He continued: “It’s not a loss to me or to any of the leaders who make the decisions that it’s not just characters we’re eliminating, but people with passions, ambitions and responsibilities. Lives will be affected.”
The 10,000 job cuts would represent less than one percent of the group’s total payroll, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of September, due to seasonal workers hired during busy periods such as the Christmas holidays. Don’t count.
The layoffs follow an aggressive hiring process.
With business booming due to the coronavirus pandemic and people turning to online shopping, Amazon doubled its workforce to 1.62 million employees two years later from the first quarter of 2020.
But with the economy faltering, Amazon announced a hiring freeze two weeks ago and its workforce is already smaller than it was at the start of the year.
The US retail giant saw its net profit fall 9% year-on-year in the third quarter.
And for the current quarter, the key holiday season, the group expects growth to be an anemic 2 to 8 percent year-on-year by its standards.
Many technology companies that have been hiring heavily during the pandemic have recently announced job cuts, including Meta, Twitter, Stripe and Lyft.
