The number of departures could reach 10,000, or approximately 3 % of the workforce outside the warehouses, according to the American press.
by Alexandre Piquard
After Meta or Twitter, Amazon will, in turn, fire several thousand people, from this week. The precise number of departures – not confirmed by the company – could reach 10,000, write the new york times and Financial Times , Monday, November 14. In absolute value, the wave of deletion of positions is comparable to that suffered by the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp (11,000 layoffs) or by the social network bought by Elon Musk (3,750 plus several thousand providers). However, the proportion is, at Amazon, much less: it would represent less than 1 % of the 1.5 million employees of the world leader in online sales and around 3 % of its employees out of its warehouses.
For the company founded by Jeff Bezos, accustomed to years of uninterrupted growth, such a departure plan affecting the employees of the offices is completely unusual. It symbolizes the cold stroke that affects technological companies in recent months.
The change of atmosphere is notable compared to the euphoria known after the Pandemic of COVID-19 by the sector, carried by the increase in digital uses linked to confinements, e-commerce in mind. To support its accelerated growth, Amazon probably set a historic recruitment record: its workforce between the end of 2019 and the end of 2021, doubled, from 800,000 to 1.6 million employees. The company has become the second employer in the world, behind the American mass distribution giant Walmart.
decrease in the action of 42 %
Since then, the exceptional growth of e-commerce has been tapped and the risk of economic recession combined with inflation has hovered the spectrum of a retard for sales and an increase in costs. At the end of July, the company published an accounting quarterly loss of $ 2 billion (1.92 billion euros). In the third quarter, Amazon announced a net profit of 2.9 billion dollars and kept growth in turnover by 15 % but planned that the latter would not exceed 2 to 8 % at the end of the year. The action has dropped by 42 % since January.
In reaction, the group A, before the summer, announced, consider itself in “overcapacity” of warehouses and enrollment. And plan to “reduce” costs. This has resulted in a slowdown in warehouse openings and some surface transfers, but also in a reduction in the number of warehouse employees, of the order of 80,000 not replaced departures, according to the American press. Hiring gel was extended last week to office employees.
In recent days, managing director Andy Jassy, who replaced Jeff Bezos in 2021, launched an internal savings research process. Amazon has already, this fall, closed the remote medical consultation service and in person Amazon Care, as well as the Small Scout delivery robot project. Savings should affect certain non -profitable services.
According to the American press, the dismissals announced Monday, November 14, should in particular cause departures in the “Apparatus” division. This brings together the production of electronic objects such as the Kindle reader, the Fire tablets and interface of the Fire TV TV connection, as well as the Echo connected speakers and the Ring connected bells, but also the Alexa Vocal Assistant, including the teams reach 10,000 people. The management teams of e-commerce activities should also undergo departures, as well as those of human resources, the time is no longer for massive hires.