Amazon is preparing to lay off as many as 10,000 employees, The New York Times reported on Monday, making the e-commerce behemoth the latest tech giant to unleash a large-scale redundancy plan.
This would represent a little less than one percent of the group’s total payroll, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of September, not counting seasonal workers who are recruited during periods of increased activity like the Christmas holidays.
The Times report said the affected positions will be located in Amazon’s devices department, the retail division and human resources.
The distribution by country was not specified.
The report said that the total number of employees laid off could change, but if confirmed, it would be the largest round of firings in the history of the 28-year-old company founded by Jeff Bezos.
The layoffs would follow an aggressive hiring spree. With business booming due to the coronavirus pandemic, as cooped up people turned in earnest to online shopping, Amazon doubled its workforce from the first quarter of 2020 to 1.62 million employees two years later.
But with the economy souring, two weeks ago Amazon announced a hiring freeze and its workforce has already decreased compared to the beginning of the year.
Contacted by AFP, Amazon did not respond immediately to a request to comment.
Last week, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced it was cutting 11,000 jobs, or about 13 percent of its workforce.
Online payment company Stripe and car-hailing app Lyft, also recently reported big layoffs. Twitter, freshly acquired by Elon Musk, earlier this month fired about half of its 7,500 employees.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is among the richest people in the world, has revealed what he ultimately plans to do with his fortune of billions of dollars.
According to Variety, in an interview with CNN, the billionaire said he plans to donate the majority of his wealth to charitable causes within his lifetime.
With an estimated net worth of USD 124.1 billion, Bezos is the fourth richest person in the world, according to Forbes.
During the CNN interview with Chloe Melas on Monday, Bezos divulged that most of his donations will go towards fighting climate change and to people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions, reported Variety.
According to the outlet, he said that philanthropy "is really hard" and "we're building the capacity to be able to give away this money".
Bezos, who stepped down as the CEO of Amazon in July 2021, owns slightly less than 10 per cent of the company's shares along with the Washington Post and aerospace company Blue Origin.
Speaking about his humanitarian acts, in 2020 he announced the formation of the Bezos Earth Fund, which he set up to grant USD 10 billion over 10 years to scientists, activists and non-governmental organisations “to help preserve and protect the natural world".
According to Variety, until now, Bezos had not officially signed on to the Giving Pledge, which encourages high net-worth individuals to commit to giving away more than half their wealth.
