It’s a shock number. According to information from New York Times, Amazon plans to lay off nearly 10,000 employees soon. These job cuts will occur in the Tech giant’s appliances branch, including its voice assistant Alexa, but also in retail, which includes its few physical stores, and e-commerce. Human resources will also be affected.
A surprising decision from Amazon
To put that number of 10,000 in context, that’s 3% of Amazon’s employees worldwide, and 1% of its workforce. We know that many people, and in particular the delivery people, work on the job for the Tech giant, without benefiting from the status of employee.
There would be a form of paradox in this announcement. Amazon is indeed a victim of what is called “the great resignation”. Behind this name, we find the idea that some workers have decided to abandon companies whose working conditions are deemed too difficult to restore meaning to their lives. To remain attractive, the company has significantly increased the remuneration of some of its employees, and recruitment is one of the major concerns of management.
Likewise, it should be remembered that the company’s payroll has increased considerably due to the pandemic. The growth of e-commerce has indeed greatly favored Amazon, and the latter had to recruit en masse for two years.
But as the prestigious American newspaper reminds us, the Tech giant has already reduced the sails on some of its activities this year. It thus closed its Amazon Care health care service, Scout, its delivery robot also paid the price for this period, while Fabric.com, a subsidiary which had been selling supplies for thirty years, also ceased to operate.
Amazon in the footsteps of Meta and Twitter
Jeff Bezos’ firm has not yet wished to respond to our colleagues. If this news is confirmed, it would put the company in the footsteps of other very large American technology companies.
We know that Meta confirmed last week that it was going to lay off 10,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce. Similarly, and in the wake of the takeover of Twitter, around half of the employees had to leave the company and were made redundant, i.e. around 3,600 people. Following this announcement, the company seemed to backtrack and recall some of them who might be useful in the future.
Source: Presse-Citron
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
