AMAZON is to lay off 10,000 employees, about three per cent of its over 1.5 million workforce as of September 30, media reports said on Wednesday.
This is coming after Twitter and Meta downsized their workforce.
An official post by Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti said economic uncertainty will halt hiring to balance the workforce while managing challenges.
According to the BBC there are LinkedIn posts by workers who claim they have been impacted by Amazon job cuts.
Employees affected include those in Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant business, Luna cloud gaming platform division and Lab126 – the operation behind the Kindle e-reader.
Amazon’s founder and chairman Jeff Bezos warned about the United States economic downturn last month, while the company’s share price fell by 40 per cent.
While big technology firms Twitter and Meta have downsized their workforce to cut costs, Microsoft, Stripe and Salesforce have also announced staff cuts.
An anonymous insider told the BBC that the job market had changed due to remote work.
“The last two years has been great for job opportunities because of remote work meaning you don’t have to isolate a job search to your local area. So that’s seen the scramble for talent become very competitive and wages have gone up really high.
“What we’re seeing now is a contraction in budgets and staffing,” he said.
He added that technology companies, including Amazon, may be hit hard as there are lots of workers who are not providing much value and must be cut off.
