E-commerce giant Amazon announced on Wednesday evening January 4 that it would remove “just over 18,000” jobs, including in Europe, another major sign of the difficulties of the technology sector in the United States.
In a message on the group’s website, chief executive Andy Jassy said that Amazon, which had already announced some 10,000 job cuts in November, revised its estimate upwards and “plans to cut just over 18,000 jobs”.
Without indicating the distribution of these job cuts, the manager, who specifies that he has decided to announce “this news quickly” because they have ” leak »mentions that the employees affected “or their representatives, if any, in Europe” will be contacted by the company on January 18.
Amazon doubled its global staff between 2020 and 2022
“The review of our annual planning (…) has been more challenging this year given the economic uncertainty and the fact that we have been hiring heavily over the past few years,” says Amazon again.
The distribution group has indeed hired with a vengeance during the pandemic to meet the explosion in demand, doubling its global staff between the beginning of 2020 and the beginning of 2022. The group had 1.54 million employees in late September. the world, without including seasonal workers recruited during periods of increased activity, in particular during the end-of-year holidays.
“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” assures the boss of the American group.
The biggest job cuts plan
This job cut plan is the largest among recent announcements of workforce reductions affecting the technology sector in the United States. It is also the most massive staff reduction in the Seattle company’s history.
Amazon saw its net profit drop 9% year on year in the third quarter. And for the last quarter, Amazon anticipated in November anemic growth by its standards, between 2 and 8% over one year, and an operating profit of between 0 and 4 billion dollars, against 3.5 for the same period. of 2021.
Source : BBN NEWS
