Amazon Will Reportedly Lay Off 10,000 - 1% of Workforce

Following mass layoffs at social giants like Twitter and Meta, Amazon is now planning to lay off up to 10,000 employees -- the largest cuts in its company history -- as soon as this week, according to The New York Times.

Amazon will focus on cutting employees from the company's device business, including various Alexa-centric products, as well as human resources, and the retail unit.

While Meta's recent layoffs of 11,000 employees made up approximately 13% of its workforce, Amazon's job cuts make up a mere 3% of the company's corporate ranks, and only 1% of its global workforce, showing just how large a company Amazon has become.

In last week's article from The Verge, an Amazon spokesperson addressed potential changes in the device business, saying that the company is “as optimistic about Alexa’s future today as we've ever been, and it remains an important business and area of investment for Amazon.”

Alexa has recorded annual operating losses of $5 billion in recent years.

The pandemic produced Amazon's most profitable era on record, The Timesstates, when consumers had little choice but to shop online and companies used its cloud computing services.

Amazon doubled its workforce over the past two years. Between January and October 2020, the company added 427,000 employees, increasing its overall employee number to 1.2 million.

However, at the beginning of this month, Amazon said it would pause incremental hires in its corporate workforce, after doubling its salary cap for corporate employees earlier this year.

The most recent job cuts are a result of a souring global economy and follow recent moves made by other major tech companies like Meta and Twitter (under the guidance of Elon Musk Twitter's workforce has been halved), as well as Lyft, Stripe, and Snap Inc.

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