Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week, people with knowledge of the matter said, in what would be the largest job cuts in the company’s history.

The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organisation, including the voice-assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. The total number of layoffs remains fluid. But if it stays around 10,000, that would represent roughly 3 per cent of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1 per cent of its global workforce of more than 1.5 million, which is primarily composed of hourly workers.

Amazon’s planned retrenchment during the critical holiday shopping season — when the company typically has valued stability — shows how quickly the souring global economy has put pressure on it to trim businesses that have been overstaffed or underdelivering for years. Amazon would also become the latest technology company to lay off workers, which only recently it had been fighting to retain.

Earlier this year, the e-commerce giant more than doubled the cap on cash compensation for its tech workers, citing “a particularly competitive labour market”. Changing business models and the precarious economy have set off layoffs across the tech industry.

Elon Musk halved Twitter’s headcount this month after buying the company, and last week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced it was laying off 11,000 employees, about 13 per cent of its workforce. Lyft, Stripe, Snap and other tech firms have also laid off workers in recent months. The pandemic produced Amazon’s most profitable era on record, as consumers flocked to online shopping and companies to its cloud computing services.

Amazon doubled its workforce in two years and funnelled its winnings into expansion and experimentation to find the next big things. But earlier this year, Amazon’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades, as the bullwhip of the pandemic snapped.

The company faced high costs from decisions to overinvest and rapidly expand, while changes in shopping habits and high inflation dented sales. Amazon experienced a slight rebound in its latest quarter. But it has cautioned investors that growth could weaken again, possibly falling to its lowest pace since 2001. The company has told Wall Street that it has tightened its belt in the past and can do so again.

(New York Times News Service)