After Meta and Twitter, it’s Amazon’s turn to launch a vast social plan? In decline since the end of the pandemic, the online sales platform is preparing to lay off around 10,000 employees, according to the New York Times.
According to the American daily, the positions affected by the workforce reductions will be located in the Amazon Devices department (electronic devices equipped with the voice assistant Alexa or even Kindle readers), in the retail division as well as in the human ressources. However, the breakdown by country is not specified. The newspaper also notes that the total number of dismissed employees is likely to change.
Contacted this Monday by AFP, Amazon did not react immediately. If the figure of 10,000 jobs cut were to be confirmed, it would be the most important social plan in the history of the company. This would represent a little less than 1% of the group’s current payroll, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of September, not counting seasonal workers, recruited during periods of increased activity, in particular for the Christmas holidays. end of the year.
The company had already announced a hiring freeze in its offices two weeks ago. And its workforce has already shrunk from the start of the year, when it employed 1.62 million people full-time or part-time.
The American giants in turmoil
Amazon has been hiring with a vengeance during the pandemic, to meet the explosion in demand, doubling its global staff between the start of 2020 and the start of 2022. But the American retail giant saw its net profit drop by 9% on a year in the third trimester. And for the current quarter, the crucial period of the end of the year holidays, the Amazon company anticipates anemic growth with regard to its standards.
Even Amazon Web Services (AWS), the group’s remote computing (cloud) business, which has so far shown insolent growth and profitability, saw its revenues increase more moderately this summer, climbing 27% , compared to 39% a year ago. “Macroeconomic uncertainty has led to an increase in the number of AWS customers wanting to control their costs” and thus save on their technology expenses, explained the group’s chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, during a conference call. presentation of the results at the end of October.
Besides Amazon, the big platforms whose business model is based on advertising are facing budget cuts from advertisers, who are reducing their expenses in the face of inflation and rising interest rates. The economic crisis is affecting most major tech companies which have hired heavily during the pandemic.
Last Wednesday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced the loss of 11,000 jobs, or about 13% of its workforce. At the end of August, Snapchat cut about 20% of its workforce, or more than 1,200 employees. Twitter, freshly acquired by Elon Musk, for its part has fired about half of its 7,500 employees. Finally, two Silicon Valley companies, the online payment services specialist Stripe and the chauffeur-driven car booking platform Lyft, also recently announced large-scale layoffs.