Amazon Inc. is reportedly planning to cut its workforce by firing around 10,000 corporate and technology staff starting this week.
According to Engadget, the company plans to focus the layoffs on its consumer-facing devices division, which will affect about 3% of the company's corporate employees.
This Would Be Amazon's Largest Cuts In The Company's History
With 1.5 million people employed at Amazon globally, the company provides job opportunities to multiple communities as one of the biggest retailers in the world.
However, in the following weeks, the multi-billion-dollar company is executing its biggest layoff yet in its 30-year history, sweeping out a huge number of its employees.
Inquirer Business writes that the layoffs will specifically affect its human resources and retail divisions, according to an unnamed source.
While the company did not provide any details or a time frame for when the cuts are happening, the source says that the workforce reduction is due to the tech industry's recent economic uncertainties.
It is important to note that the company's decision to implement these layoffs follows a wave of staff cuts across the technology sector in the United States.
In fact, on November 9, Facebook's parent company Meta let go of 13% of its employees, which caused 11,000 people to lose their jobs.
Even before that, Twitter, another prominent name in the industry, reduced its staff headcount by as much as 50% when Elon Musk took over.
The technology industry's recession also forced smaller businesses like Lyft and Snap to fire their employees in recent months as well.
Engadget reports that Amazon's plans to reduce the workforce is reflective of the company's slow growth after the pandemic when in-person shopping made its comeback.
The retail giant is pivoting from conducting hiring sprees to cutting costs as they posted a $2 billion loss following the economic crisis.
Even With Several Hiring Adjustments, Amazon Remains In Critical Condition
At the end of 2019, Amazon recorded a total of about 798,000 employees, but hiring inflation increased its total number of staff by 102% by the end of December 2021.
According to CNBC, since the holiday season is incremental to the company's growth, it is usually when Amazon increases its employee headcount to strengthen manpower.
However, with recent reports detailing that some operating units at Amazon are losing more than $5 billion, they decided to freeze hiring to focus on voice assistant technologies instead.
Because of this, the company has been delaying hiring, and even closing and delaying some warehouse locations to reduce their losses.
CNBC writes that this forced Amazon to find an immediate solution to cut its losses as some of the company's investors are still concerned about the 13% share drop the company experienced in Q3.
According to Inquirer Business, as of recent, Amazon's shares have lost more than 40% of their market value this year, and they also recorded a 1.1% drop at $99.67 on Monday.
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