Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week, people with knowledge of the matter said, in what would be the largest job cuts in the company’s history.
The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The number of layoffs remains fluid and is likely to roll out team by team rather than all at once as each business finishes plans, one person said. But if it stays around 10,000, it would represent roughly 3 percent of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1 percent of its global work force of more than 1.5 million, which is primarily composed of hourly workers.
Amazon’s planned retrenchment during the critical holiday shopping season — when the company typically has valued stability — shows how quickly the souring global economy has put pressure on it to trim businesses that have been overstaffed or underdelivering for years.
Amazon would also become the lates to lay off workers, which only recently it had been fighting to retain. The e-commerce giant more the cap on cash compensation for its tech workers this year, citing “a particularly competitive labor market.”
Changing business models and the precarious economy have set off laoffe cross the tech industry. Elon Musk halved Twitter’s head count this month after buying the company, and last week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, annoted it was laying off 11,000 employees, about 13 percent of its work force. Lyft, Stripe, Snap and other tech firms have also laid off workers in recent months.
The pandemic produced Amazon’s most profitable era on record, as consumers flocked to online sho companies to its cloud computing services. Amazon in two years, and funneled its winnings into expansion and experimentation to find the next big things.
But earlier this year, Amazon’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades, as the bullwhip of the pandemic snapped. The company faced high costs from decisions to overinvest and rapidly expand, while changes in shopping habits and high inflation dented sales.
Amazon experienced a slight rebound in its latest quarter. But it has cautioned investors thatgrowh.
The company has told Wall Street that it has tightened its belt in the past and can do so again. Amazon cut. 1500 including hourly workers, in 2001 during the dot-com crash, which amounted to 15 percent
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Mr. Jassy, who previously ran Amazon’s lucrative cloud computing business, has been closely scrutinizing businesses to trim costs quickly. He initially pulled back on a warehouse expansion that was supercharged during the pandemic, then moved to other parts of the company.
In recent months, Amazon has also closed or pared back a smattering of initiatives, including Amazon Care, its service providing primary and urgent health care that failed nough customers; Scout, the cooler-size home delivery robot, that employed 400 people, according tobloodg and Fabric.com, a subsidiary that sold sewing supplies for three decades.
From April through September, it reduced head count by almost 80,000 people, primarily shrinking its hourly staff throug hig.
That news came so suddenly that recruiters did not receive talking points for job candidates until almost a week later, according to a copy of the talking points seen by The New York Times.
John Blackledge, an analyst at Cowen & Company who has covered Amazon for a decade, said his calculations showed Amazon’s core consumer business — everything besides cloud computing and advertising — had been losing billions this year. “They need to review everything,” he said. “This is just not sustainable.”
Devices and Alexa have long been seen internally as at risk for cuts. Alexa and related devices rocketed to a top company priority as Amazon raced to create the leading voice assistant, which leaders thought could succeed mobile phones as the next essential consumer interface. From 2017 to 2018, Amazon doubled staff on Alexa and Echo
The company has sold hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices. But Amazon has said the products are often low margin and other potential revenue sources such as voice shopping have not caught on.
In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot.
Amazon’s retail business, which covers its physical and online retail business and its logistics operations, has been under strain after the surge of demand and breakneck expansion during the pandemic. The company has said it pulled back expansion plans, and has told investors it sees uncertainty with consumers.
