Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 employees this week: Report

Washington, Nov 14: Amazon is planning to lay off thousands of employees in corporate and technology jobs citing cost-cutting measures. The company may fire as many as 10,000 employees starting as soon as this week, reports New York Times.

If this plan comes into effect, it would be the biggest layoff in the history of Amazon. It would affect nearly 1 per cent of the workforce of the company which employs over 1.6 million globally.

Amazon, after a months-long review, has cautioned employees in some unprofitable units to look for other opportunities within the company, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The fear of recession has loomed large with several MNCs initiating cost-cutting measures. In the last two months, many companies have fired their employees and restructured their workforce.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, on Wednesday announced that it is laying off 11,000 workers as part of its cost-cutting strategy. In a letter to employees, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the company, said the company has decided to reduce the size of the team by about 13 per cent and is letting 11,000 employees go.

This comes days after Twitter takeover, its new boss Elon Musk fired over 3,000 out of 7,000+ employees. Microsoft (1,000), Snap (over 1000), Lyft (about 7000), Stripe (around 1,100), Coinbase (1,100), Shopify (1,000) and Netflix (450) have also taken measures to reduce the cost by sacking its employees.

The inflation and the fear of recession followed by the under-performance in the first quarter have made companies to play safe and take steps to reduce the expenditure.