Amazon Can Fire 10,000 Employees In A Single Go; These Business Divisions Likely To Be Impacted

Amid the ongoing layoffs of masses in top multinational corporations like Facebook’s parent company Meta and the social networking giant Twitter, there are reports of the world’s largest online retailer Amazon Inc joining the list too.

Reports state that the e-commerce behemoth could fire as many as 10,000 employees of its company at a global level as it has been reporting profitability issues and not meeting bottomline targets since the past few quarters.

Amazon has over 16 lakh employees all over the world, so shedding off 10,000 employees would mean an even less than 1% cut in its existing workforce but even this number if attained, would mark as the largest firing programme in the history of the company.

Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Amazon’s Anticipated Lay-offs

According to a New York Times report, the US-based e-commerce major is planning to cut nearly 10,000 of its employee pool starting this week, as it has been ailing with profitability woes since the past few quarters.

However, not all branches/segments of the company will be affected uniformly with the job cut, it is said.

Reports suggest that the layoffs would broadly occur over company sectors including the Amazon devices segment like the Alexa voice assistant, the retail section and the human resources division. 

The company is yet to provide anything concrete on the company’s layoffs report.

Firings Come at A Critical Holiday-Season Time

The upcoming holiday season is a crucial period for e-commerce giants like Amazon, as the traffic on platforms mushroom and the number of orders soar.

At a time like this, when Amazon used to generate its highest sales compared to the whole year and indulge in increasing its staff levels to meet the Christmas demand surge, there are reports that the company may trim its existing workforce by a considerable number.

Much of this year was spent by the company adjusting to the irregularities of the Covid-19 pandemic and surging inflation. Amazon delayed warehouse openings and froze hiring in the retail group.

“Amazon’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades, as the bullwhip of the pandemic snapped,” stated the NY Times report.