The corporate and technical layoffs began on Tuesday as Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, stepped up efforts to rein in operating costs. Amazon employees posted on LinkedIn that they were affected, and the company notified employees in various departments, including Alexa and Luna’s cloud gaming division, that they were being laid off. Amazon plans to cut about 10,000 jobs, mostly in its retail, devices and human resources departments, The New York Times reported Monday. According to The Times, the number remains uncertain because the cuts are being carried out by individual teams.
As of midday Tuesday, Amazon had not sent any word companywide about its plans to cut jobs, according to a person familiar with the matter, which has sparked an uproar among employees, and an Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter. In recent weeks, Amazon has also begun to lay off some contract workers who held recruiting positions in its advertising, internal operations and Fire TV divisions.
Amazon CEO Jassy has slashed expenses across the company in recent months as the company has been hit by a weak economy and slowing growth in its retail business. The move came after the company said it would suspend corporate hiring and put some experimental programs on hold, opting to close, delay or cancel new warehouse locations and avoiding major layoffs by offering employees affected by program closures the opportunity to transfer to other parts of the company.
The layoffs are a clear trend reversal for Amazon, which less than a year ago was struggling to find enough workers to keep its operations going and was on a hiring spree. From the end of 2019 to the end of 2021, Amazon nearly doubled its headcount, from 798,000 employees worldwide to 1.6 million.
But Amazon’s business has slowed as consumers have returned to physical stores. Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said last month that there were signs that consumers were feeling the sting of inflation.
“We are preparing for what could be a prolonged slowdown in growth,” Olsavsky said on a call with reporters after the company reported third-quarter earnings. The company still plans to hire 150,000 workers during the Christmas season, the same number it said it would add last year. The layoffs have hit the tech industry hard after years of torrid growth. Facebook parent Meta laid off 13 percent of its workforce last week, while Twitter, Shopify, Salesforce and Stripe also announced layoffs.
The job cuts are expected to be the biggest in Amazon’s 28-year history. In 2001, after the dot-com bubble burst, Amazon laid off 1,300 workers, or 15% of its work force at the time.