Amazon to lay off 10,000 employees: Report

Retail giant Amazon is reportedly planning to lay off around 10,000 employees beginning as soon as this week, The New York Times reported Monday, per individuals familiar with the matter. The cuts would be the largest in the company's history.

The layoffs would reportedly focus on corporate employees in Amazon's devices organization, its retail division, and its human resources division, the Times writes. The total number of layoffs also "remains fluid and is likely to roll out team by team rather than all at once as each business finalizes plans," the Times summarizes, per one source.

Separately, the company has "already started laying off contractors working in recruiting, who in the past few weeks were told that their assignments were abruptly ending," added The Wall Street Journal.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

The alleged layoffs arrive amid a broader reckoning moment for Big Tech, with companies like Facebook and Twitter having similarly slashed their payrolls in recent weeks. Per the Journal, Amazon's reductions are part of a larger cost-cutting review.

Though the retail giant thrived during the height of COVID-19, its "growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades" earlier this year once "the bullwhip of the pandemic snapped." Should the total job cuts stay around 10,000, they'll amount to "roughly 3 percent of Amazon's corporate employees and less than 1 percent of its global workforce of more than 1.5 million, which is primarily composed of hourly workers," the Times writes.