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The American online store Amazon plans to lay off around 10,000 employees soon. This reports The New York Times Monday based on insiders. The exact scale of the series of layoffs is still a subject of discussion, according to the newspaper.
The slew of layoffs is thought to take place primarily in Amazon’s devices division, which develops the Kindle e-reader and Alexa voice computer and in which the company invests $5 billion a year. There would also be significant reductions among office workers – technicians and the human resources department. Fulfillment centers, where Amazon is short of employees by default, will not be affected.
Amazon employs approximately one and a half million people worldwide. This makes it the second largest private employer in the United States after the supermarket chain Walmart. It is unclear whether the series of layoffs will also affect jobs in the Netherlands. Amazon established the international headquarters of its AWS cloud division in Amsterdam and opened its first Dutch fulfillment center in Rozenburg, near Hoofddorp, last year.
Amazon is working on cost savings under CEO Andy Jassy, who took over from Jeff Bezos last summer. Earlier, Jassy closed distribution centers that were not earning enough and plans for new centers were postponed. During the pandemic, Amazon has invested heavily in its logistics centers to cope with the increase in online orders. Amazon did this, among other things, by hiring a record 800,000 new employees.
Multiple dismissals
With the wave of layoffs, Amazon (annual revenue in 2021: 400 billion euros) joins a series of large technology companies which are forced to reduce their workforce under the pressure of the sluggish global economy.
For example, immediately after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk announced that he would lay off half of the 7,500 employees. Last week followed Meta, which let go 13% of its staff (11,000 employees). Companies such as Netflix, Snap, Tesla and Stripe have also recently laid off staff on a large scale. Many young tech companies (start-ups) are now downsizing due to a lack of new growth capital.
Big rounds of layoffs have yet to be made at Dutch tech companies, although meal delivery company Just Eat Takeaway announced earlier this year that it would not be hiring new staff at this time. Tech companies with large offices in the Netherlands that have already downsized during the pandemic, such as taxi app Uber and hotel website Booking.com, are busy hiring new staff.
