Amazon’s US online store plans to lay off about 10,000 employees soon. that reports New York times Monday based on Insiders. According to the newspaper, the exact size of the round of layoffs is still a matter of debate.
The layoff round will mainly take place in Amazon’s hardware division, which develops the Kindle e-reader and Alexa voice computer, among others, and in which the company invests $5 billion annually. There will also be significant cutbacks among office staff – tech workers and the HR department. Distribution centers will not be affected, as Amazon, by default, is understaffed.
Amazon employs about one and a half million people worldwide. This makes it the second largest private employer in the United States after Wal-Mart. It is not known if the round of layoffs will also affect jobs in the Netherlands. Amazon established the international headquarters for its cloud division AWS in Amsterdam and opened its first Dutch distribution center in Rosenborg, near Hoofddorp, last year.
Amazon has been working on cost-savings under CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded Jeff Bezos last summer. Earlier, Jassy closed distribution centers that weren’t doing enough and plans for new ones were shelved. During the pandemic, Amazon has invested heavily in its logistics centers to handle the surge in online orders. Amazon did this, among other things, by hiring a record 800,000 new employees.
Multiple hairstyles for workers
With the round of layoffs, Amazon (annual turnover in 2021: 400 billion euros) joins a series of large technology companies that are forced to reduce their workforce under pressure from the global economic slowdown.
For example, immediately after the acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk announced that he would lay off half of the 7,500 employees. Mita followed last week, which allowed 13 percent of its employees (11,000 employees) to furlough. Recently, companies such as Netflix, Snap, Tesla, and Stripe have laid off employees on a massive scale. Many young technology companies (startups) are now reducing their workforce due to lack of new growth capital.
No major rounds of layoffs have yet occurred at Dutch tech companies, although meal delivery company Just Eat Takeaway announced earlier this year that it would not be hiring any new staff for now. Tech companies with a large office in the Netherlands that have already reduced staff numbers during the pandemic, such as ride-hailing app Uber and hotel site Booking.com, are busy hiring new staff.
