The Grinch Who Stole Christmas: Amazon Plans to Lay Off Thousands of Employees

Amazon plans to cut approximately 10,000 workers starting as soon as this week according to reports.

The New York Times reports that according to verified sources, Amazon plans to reduce its corporate and technology workforce by as much as 10,000 employees as soon as this week, the largest downsizing in the firm’s history.

According to sources who declined to be named, Amazon is planning to cut jobs across its devices division, which includes the company’s voice assistant Alexa, as well as its retail division and human resources department.

The number of layoffs is still unknown, however, if the figure is around 10,000 it would account for approximately three percent of Amazon’s corporate workforce and less than one percent of its global employee count of over 1.5 million employees.

The NYT notes that the company’s mass layoffs during the holiday shopping season, a time when the company is extremely busy and tends to focus on stability, is a sign of the continued downturn of the global economy. Many businesses are facing pressure to become leaner in order to survive in the current economic climate.

If the layoffs go ahead, Amazon will become the most recent technology firm to fire a large number of workers. In recent years, Amazon has been attempting to retain workers. Just earlier this year, the tech giant doubled its cap on cash compensation for its technical employees as a result of  “a particularly competitive labor market.”

Breitbart News recently reported on layoffs at Facebook.

CNBC reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced in a letter to employees that the company would be laying off 13 percent of its staff, or more than 11,000 employees.

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” Zuckerberg said in the letter. “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.”

 

Following the news, Facebook shares fell 4.5 percent in premarket trading. Facebook provided lukewarm guidance for its upcoming fourth-quarter earnings in late October, spooking investors and causing their shares to plummet almost 20 percent.

Read more at the New York Times here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan