Amazon cuts 10,000 jobs ahead of Christmas

The New York Times reports that "Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week."

In August, it was revealed that Amazon had laid off 100,000 of workers from its overall workforce in a single financial quarter, which came as the company lost $2 billion net for the second quarter of 2022. The company has more than 1.5 million employees worldwide, although most of those are hourly workers.

The 10,000-person layoff would count as the biggest single job cut the company has ever done and is reported to "focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice-assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources," according to the Times.

The Times received the news from insiders who requested anonymity as they "were not authorized to speak publicly."

Amazon joins Facebook parent company Meta and Twitter in mass layoffs in 2022.

The layoffs come as the holiday season approaches, a time when commerce usually sees a pronounced uptick. The common denominator is the impact of economic upheaval both globally and especially in the United States where Biden's economy has seen record-high inflation, unprecedented supply chain shortages, citizens laden with record-breaking debt, and an economy in recession.

The Covid pandemic was lucrative for Amazon, and caused the company to double its workforce. Its growth contracted disproportionately in 2022. Last week the company's stock sank to pre-pandemic levels and eliminated $1 trillion in value, serving as a black eye for new CEO Andy Jassy.

"Amazon froze hiring in several smaller teams in September. In October, it stopped filling more than 10,000 open roles in its core retail business. Two weeks ago, it froze corporate hiring across the company, including its cloud computing division, for the next few months," according to the Times.

Further, the company has stopped or radically slowed its Amazon Care program, a health care provider service, and Scout-home delivery robot services.