Amazon Toward Laying off 9,000 Employees
March 22, 2023
The adviser in charge of Amazon, Andy Jassy, has announced this Monday the dismissal of 9,000 more workers. The elimination of these positions is added to the 18,000 jobs that the company has already made known that it was going to minimize.
“It has been a difficult choice, however I think it is the best thing for the company in the long term”
Jassy said in a public communication to the staff.
The new layoffs will be concentrated in the cloud computing, human resources, advertising and Twitch divisions. With this round, the layoffs announced by the electronic business and cloud computing giant increased to 27,000, a record number in the history of the sector, and once again surpassed those of Meta, which had stood out with the round of cuts announced last week.
Problems
It is the largest of each of the technology companies in absolute terms, although in relative figures it is less than 2% of the total number of employees, since the company has around 1.5 million workers. Of the tech giants, Meta is the one that has announced the biggest job cuts in relative terms. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced 10,000 last week after they were added to the 11,000 already anticipated in November last year.
These two shifts account for nearly 25 % of the workforce, which ended 2022 with about 86,000 employees. Most tech companies started a hiring spree in the midst of the pandemic. At a time when changing customer habits boosted their business. Then, however, came the cutbacks.
As the pandemic disappeared, demand for some technology products and services declined. In addition, the economy is cooling down due to rising interest rates. Among monumental technologies, the exclusive one that avoided mass layoffs was Apple.
Amazon
Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have pulled out the scissors. In the technology sector group, announced layoffs are about 300,000 between 2022 and 2023. This is according to Layoffs.fyi, which calculates the announced cuts. These adjustments in the area contrast with an economy close to full employment, with an unemployment rate below 4 percent. Which earlier this year reached its lowest level in more than half a century.
Economic uncertainty
This economic situation is in a certain way what Amazon alleges in its new wave of cuts.
“Given the uncertainty of the economy in which we live and the uncertainty in the near future, we have chosen to rationalize our own prices and our staff … The important start to our annual planning this year was to be more diligent and, simultaneously, do it in a way that enables us to continue to invest strongly in key long-term consumer experiences that we believe have the potential to be significantly improved. their Lives and those of Amazon as a whole”
confirms Jassy in his report.
The consultant in charge of Amazon explains that the organization’s activities have reordered their priorities. Which has sometimes meant minimizing functionality, moving people from one idea to another, or generating new positions for Amazon team members. Today they do not have the ideal capacities.
Conclusion
The layoffs at Amazon have raised numerous concerns regarding company policies and employee rights protection. While the company has justified the layoffs as necessary to ensure a safe and respectful work environment, critics have pointed out the lack of transparency and adequate communication channels for employees. In any case, the incident has highlighted the importance of greater attention to protecting workers’ rights, especially in an increasingly competitive and globalized context like the current one.
