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Amazon joins the wave of layoffs, could cut 10,000 workers

According to a leak obtained by The New York Times, the tech giant could announce the layoffs as soon as this week.

Jeff Bezos

(Daniel Oberhaus / Flickr)

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

Amazon could lay off 10,000 workers in corporate and technology jobs, according to a leak obtained by The New York Times. The layoffs will affect 3% of Amazon's corporate employees and account for less than 1% of the total workforce. The figure is large enough to make this the largest personnel cut in the company's history.

Amazon's layoffs come not long after those announced recently by Twitter and Meta. However, Amazon declined to confirm the report. At the moment, the only information comes from the leaks that got both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Jeff Bezos himself pointed out the dangers of the economic recession in an interview with CNN on Monday. The tycoon advised businesses to "take some risk off the table." In Amazon's case, it looks like they could go through massive layoffs:

What I can tell you is the economy does not look great right now. Things are slowing down. You’re seeing layoffs in many, many sectors of the economy. People are slowing down. The probabilities say if we’re not in a recession right now, we’re likely to be in one very soon. So, my advice to people, whether they are small business owners or ... is to take some risk off the table.

This is not the only measure that the company implemented to alleviate its poor financial results. Earlier this month, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti announced that Amazon would temporarily halt hiring new employees:

With the economy in an uncertain place and in light of how many people we have hired in the last few years, Andy and S-team decided this week to pause on new incremental hires in our corporate workforce. We had already done so in a few of our businesses in recent weeks and have added our other businesses to this approach. We anticipate keeping this pause in place for the next few months, and will continue to monitor what we’re seeing in the economy and the business to adjust as we think makes sense.

Bezos announces $124 million donation to charity

At the same time the leak of the 10,000 layoffs was released, Bezos announced during his CNN interview that he would donate $124 million to charitable causes. Of this, $100 million, he revealed, went to country music star Dolly Parton:

Parton, who will receive the donation as the recipient of the "Bezos Courage & Civility Award" already responded that she "will do [her] best to do good things with this money":

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