Amazon reportedly set to lay off 10,000 employees

Tech giant Amazon is set to lay off 10,000 employees, according to a new report from the New York Times. The report states that the layoffs would come predominantly from the company’s devices organization, retail division and human resources.

The reported layoffs would affect about 3% of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1% of its global workforce. The company has more than 1.5 million workers worldwide

The layoffs are expected to start from this week and it certainly would be the largest job cuts in the company’s history. This is most certainly part of the company’s cost cutting review recently launched by CEO Andy Jassy which also includes includes suspending or eliminating unprofitable projects.

Amazon would be the latest tech company to let go of many of its employees due to falling revenues. Elon Musk let go of 50% of its workforce after acquiring the company while Meta sacked 11,000 employees (13%) to become a leaner and more efficient company

Some days ago, Amazon set a new record by being the world’s first public company to lose a trillion dollars in market value. This was due to a combination of rising inflation, tightening monetary policies and disappointing earnings updates triggered a historic selloff in the stock.

Amazon’s market cap dipped to $879 billion on Wednesday last week, down from its peak of $1.88 trillion in July 2021, according to Bloomberg

 As with many other tech companies, Amazon enjoyed an amazing run during the COVID-19 pandemic which saw consumers flocking to its online shopping service and companies to its cloud computing services. This led to the company doubling its workforce in two years and embarking on ambitious expansion and experimentation

Things took a turn this year when Amazon’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades. The company was now forced to rethink a lot of its growth and expansion strategies.

Amazon has not confirmed the layoff story yet