This would be less than 1% of the group's entire payroll, which had 1.54 million employees globally at the end of September 2022, excluding seasonal workers hired at peak seasons like the Christmas holidays.
American multinational technology company, Amazon, is planning to lay off up to 10,000 people, making the e-commerce titan the latest digital powerhouse to implement a large-scale redundancy strategy.
According to The New York Times, this would be less than 1% of the group's entire payroll, which had 1.54 million employees globally at the end of September 2022, excluding seasonal workers hired at peak seasons like the Christmas holidays.
It was learnt that affected positions were located in Amazon’s devices department, the retail division and human resources but distribution by country was not specified.
The exact number of employees put off might fluctuate, according to the source, but if true, it would be the greatest round of layoffs in the company's 28-year existence, founded by Jeff Bezos.
The layoffs would come after a hiring frenzy. With the coronavirus pandemic causing a surge in online buying, Amazon more than quadrupled its workforce from the first quarter of 2020 to 1.62 million employees two years later.
However, with the economy deteriorating, Amazon imposed a hiring block two weeks ago, and its staff has already dropped since the beginning of the year.
When contacted by AFP, Amazon did not immediately react to a request for comment.
It would be recalled that a related development, Meta, Facebook's parent company, also announced the layoff of 11,000 employees, or around 13% of its staff last week.
Earlier this month, Twitter, which Elon Musk recently purchased, laid off roughly half of its 7,500 employees.