Amazon confirmed that it has started laying off employees to face the economic crisis, after rumors have been going on for days about a social plan for the giant e-commerce group.
“The economy remains in a complex situation, and we’ve hired employees quickly in recent years,” Andy Jassy, CEO of the American group, said in an internal note posted on Amazon.
The layoff procedures include, in the first stage, the staff working in the field of the brand’s electronic devices, such as the “Kindle” reading devices. As for the existing shops, they will not be affected by the layoffs.
“There will be more job cuts as managers advance their adjustments,” the Amazon CEO said, explaining that “employees and relevant organizations will be informed of these decisions in early 2023.”
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“I’ve been in this position for about a year and a half, and this is undoubtedly the most difficult decision we’ve made during this period,” Jassi said, stressing that he realizes that it’s not just about “jobs, but people with passions, aspirations, and responsibilities, and their lives will be affected.”
The size of the cut, ten thousand employees, is just under one percent of the current wage block for the group, which employed 1.54 million people worldwide at the end of September, excluding seasonal workers who are hired during periods of heightened activity, particularly in celebrations. year end.
And the company announced two weeks ago a freeze on hiring in its offices. Its workforce has actually shrunk since the beginning of the year when it had 1.62 million people working full or part time.
Amazon hired a large number of workers during the pandemic to meet the explosion in demand. The number of global workers doubled between the beginning of 2020 and the beginning of 2022.
But the retail giant saw its net profit drop by 9 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of this year.
For the current quarter, the group expects a slight growth by its standards during the year-end celebration period of between 2 and 8 percent over one year.