Amazon cuts 18,000 jobs in the US

The wave of layoffs at the online mail order company Amazon is significantly larger than initially assumed. In total, more than 18,000 jobs are to be cut, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a public employee circular. In November there was talk of only 10,000 jobs. This is the first major downsizing in the history of the US group, which was founded in 1994.

The uncertain economic prospects made personnel planning more difficult, wrote Jassy. Apparently, employees in the e-commerce division and the human resources department in particular have to go, around six percent of the approximately 300,000 employees in administration. Those affected have not yet been informed, Jassy wrote. Nevertheless, he decided to make the announcement before information leaked elsewhere. The cuts are particularly notable because no other company in the US gets as many subsidies as Amazon.

According to Amazon, it employs around 1.5 million people worldwide. The group is the second-largest private employer in the United States behind Walmart. Amazon shares gained 2 percent in US after-hours trading.

The entire tech industry is in trouble

The job cuts at Amazon is further evidence of the abrupt end of the job boom in the tech industry. After business flourished during the pandemic, the current market environment, which is characterized by fears of inflation and recession, is giving many companies a hard time. The line of companies announcing layoffs has been growing for months. For example, there were real job cuts at the Facebook and Instagram mother Meta and at the online network Twitter, which was taken over by Tesla boss Elon Musk.

The US software manufacturer Salesforce had already announced on Wednesday that it wanted to get rid of every tenth employee. According to its own statements in December, the SAP rival had more than 79,000 employees worldwide. This means that almost 8,000 jobs are likely to be lost at the sales software specialist. According to the industry service Layoffs.fyi, the tech industry in the United States cut a total of around 150,000 jobs in the past few months.

And the job dwindling is probably going even further: CEO Pat Gelsinger wants to save three billion dollars this year at the chip manufacturer Intel. This also included “personnel measures” – he did not provide any information about the scope of the job cuts. In addition, the network supplier Cisco has imposed a restructuring program. As part of this, five percent of the jobs could be lost. According to its own statements, the computer manufacturer HP is expected to cut 6,000 jobs by 2025.

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