The New York Times reported on Monday that Amazon is preparing to fire up to 10,000 workers, making the e-commerce behemoth the most recent tech titan to implement a massive layoff programme.
This would be less than 1% of the group’s total payroll, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of September, excluding seasonal workers hired during periods of increased activity such as the Christmas holidays.
According to the Times, the affected positions will be in Amazon’s devices department, retail division, and human resources.
The breakdown by country was not specified.
The report said that the total number of employees laid off could change, but if confirmed, it would be the largest round of firings in the history of the 28-year-old company founded by Jeff Bezos.
The layoffs would come after a hiring frenzy. With the coronavirus pandemic causing a surge in online shopping, Amazon more than doubled its workforce from the first quarter of 2020 to 1.62 million employees two years later.
However, with the economy deteriorating, Amazon announced a hiring freeze two weeks ago, and its workforce has already decreased since the beginning of the year.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced last week that it was cutting 11,000 jobs, or roughly 13% of its workforce.