The number represents about 6% of Amazon’s roughly 300,000 “corporate” employees. (mainly office work), a company that in total -including people who work by the hour or with temporary contracts, in warehouses and delivery tasks- has a workforce of more than 1.5 million workers.
The company is considered the second largest private employer in the United States, behind only retail giant Walmart.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the layoffs on January 4, after the plans were leaked to the press.
“We are very aware that these deletions are difficult for people and we do not take these decisions lightly, nor do we underestimate how much they can affect the lives of those affected,” Jassy explained in a message to the staff, in which he promised support and severance pay for those who are fired.
Already then, the top executive of the company indicated that the departures would begin to be communicated to the people affected -or to the unions in certain cases- as of January 18, without giving details on how the dismissals will be distributed among the many countries in which that Amazon has a presence.
As a reason for the readjustment of the workforce, Amazon pointed to the economic uncertainty and the high number of contracts that it had carried out in recent years.
During the pandemic, the US company doubled its workforce, taking advantage of the “boom” of electronic commerce and the entire technological sector.
Amazon’s balance sheet
In its fiscal year of 2020, Amazon had a net profit of more than 21,000 million, almost double that of 2019, while in 2021 it broke records again, earning more than 33,000 million dollars.
Although its accounts for the whole of 2022 are not yet known, between January and September it registered losses of 3,000 million dollars -a consequence mainly of the collapse of the shares of the Rivian electric vehicle manufacturing company, in which it has a stake. important-, despite the fact that its turnover continued to grow.
Amazon’s layoffs are part of a general trend in the technology sector, which after growing strongly in recent years has opted for major readjustments in recent months.
Companies such as Twitter, Meta or Salesforce, among many others, have carried out significant workforce cuts and it is estimated that in 2022 the technology sector lost more than 150,000 jobs, according to the Layoffs.fyi website, which compiles the figures announced by the companies. .
Source: Ambito
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