ALBAWABA — Amazon is gearing up to layoff 10,000 employees, according to reports, as the Jeffrey Bezos company becomes the latest tech company to downsize its staff in the wake of deteriorating global economic conditions.
A projected slowdown in the US economy has forced tech giants to significantly slow their hiring pace or freeze hiring altogether. Last week, Meta announced it would cut 11,000 employees and Twitter laid off thousands of employees.
Tech employment confidence is down significantly from earlier in the year, according to an index published by ZipRecruiter, as Salesforce, Microsoft, Apple, Stripe, Lyft, Redfin, Opendoor, Zendesk and many others also laid off staff.
Eclipsing the total from all of 2020, more than 120,000 tech workers have been laid off so far in 2022, amid cost-cutting reviews and a worsening macroeconomic environment, as inflation in the United States is at a 40-year record high.
Amazon's reported layoffs are expected to begin this week with staff working at its human resources and retail divisions represent about 3 per cent of Amazon’s corporate staff and less than 1 per cent of its global workforce.
Beth Galetti, Amazon's senior vice president of people experience and technology, earlier this month announced a freeze on corporate jobs as the company wanted "to balance our hiring and investments with being thoughtful about this economy".
Amazon’s belt-tightening during this critical holiday shopping season clearly delivers a viewpoint of how much the global economy is slowing, putting external pressure on the company to trim businesses that have been overstaffed or underdelivering for years.
As of December last year, Amazon had roughly 1,608,000 full-time and part-time employees, instituting a hiring freeze after warning that it had over-hired staff, almost doubling its work force, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced the company’s most profitable era on record, as consumers turned to online shopping and its cloud computing service companies.
Amazon’s growth slowed earlier this year to the lowest rate in two decades as high inflation dented sales helped along by the global economy being in the middle of a downturn, with consumers and businesses alike reining in spending.
