Amazon Prepares For Mass Layoffs, After Twitter and Meta

Amazon.com Inc AMZN plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting this week, marking the most significant job cuts in the company’s history.
The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice-assistant Alexa, as well as on its retail division and human resources, the New York Times reported.
The total number of layoffs remains fluid. But if it stays around 10,000, that would represent roughly 3% of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1% of its global workforce of more than 1.5 million, primarily composed of hourly workers.
Amazon’s planned retrenchment during the critical holiday shopping season reflected how quickly the souring global economy had pressured it to trim businesses that have been overstaffed or underdelivering for years.
Amazon would also become the latest technology company to lay off workers, which only recently it had been fighting to retain. Earlier this year, the e-commerce giant more than doubled the cap on cash compensation for its tech workers.
Elon Musk halved Twitter’s headcount this month after buying the company, and last week, Meta Platforms Inc META, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, shared plans of laying off 11,000 employees, about 13%.
Last week, Amazon executives met with institutional investors just as its stock sank to its lowest level since the early days of the pandemic, erasing $1 trillion in value since Andy Jassy took over as CEO last year.
Jassy, who previously ran Amazon’s lucrative cloud computing business, has been closely scrutinizing businesses to trim costs quickly.
Amazon has also closed or pared back initiatives as they failed to gain traction.
It reduced the headcount by almost 80,000 people from April through September.
Amazon froze hiring in several smaller teams in September.
Devices and Alexa have long been seen internally as at risk for cuts. In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion.
Price Action: AMZN shares traded lower by 1.12% at $99.71 on the last check Monday.

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