Amazon Announces Largest Layoff in Its History

SadaNews - Amazon is preparing to announce comprehensive job layoffs starting today, Tuesday, according to CNBC.

The plan will represent the largest workforce layoff in Amazon's history and will include nearly all of its operations, according to sources.

Reuters reported that Amazon plans to lay off up to 30,000 employees across the company.

Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the United States, with more than 1.54 million employees worldwide by the end of the second quarter. This number mainly consists of warehouse workers, totaling around 350,000 employees.

The planned layoffs will also represent the largest job cuts in the technology sector since at least 2020, according to Layoffs.fyi. As of Monday, more than 200 tech companies have laid off nearly 98,000 employees since the beginning of the year, according to the site that tracks job cuts in the tech sector.

Microsoft has laid off about 15,000 employees so far this year, while Meta cut nearly 600 jobs last week in its artificial intelligence unit. Google also cut over 100 design-related jobs in its cloud unit earlier this month, and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, stated in September that the company laid off 4,000 employees from its customer support division, citing its increasing reliance on AI as a driving factor behind the layoffs. This year, Intel's total layoffs reached 22,000 jobs, the largest number of any layoffs recorded on Layoffs.fyi.

2023 has seen the largest job decline in the tech sector, as the industry faced sharp rises in inflation and interest rates. The site mentioned that nearly 1,200 tech companies have canceled over 260,000 jobs.

Over the past year, companies in various sectors, including technology, banking, automotive, and retail, have noted the rise of generative AI as a force likely to change the size of their workforces, or that it may have already changed it.

Amazon has implemented renewed layoffs across the company since 2022, resulting in more than 27,000 employees being laid off. Layoffs have continued this year, albeit on a smaller scale. Amazon's cloud computing, stores, communications, and devices divisions have faced layoffs in recent months.

These layoffs are part of a broader campaign to cut costs led by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jassy has also sought to streamline Amazon's corporate structure by reducing the number of managers to "remove layers and simplify its management structure."

Jassy stated in June that Amazon's workforce may shrink further as the company embraces generative AI, telling employees that the company "will need fewer people to perform some of the tasks currently being done and more people to perform different types of tasks."

Jassy said in a June memo to employees: "It is difficult to determine the long-term impact of this, but in the next few years, we expect this to reduce the overall workforce at our company."