Amazon to lay off 10,000 people: Report

 According to The New York Times, the company's devices division, which includes the Alexa voice assistant, will bear the brunt of the layoffs, along with the retail and human resources departments.

According to The New York Times, which cites "people familiar with the subject," Amazon.com Inc. plans to fire off some 10,000 workers in corporate and technical roles beginning as soon as this week.

According to a report published on Monday, the e-commerce giant's devices section, which contains voice-assistant Alexa, as well as its retail division and human resources, could be hit hard by layoffs, with the overall number of layoffs still up in the air.

Amazon is debating whether or whether it should prioritize developing new features for the Alexa division, as the division's operational deficit for the year was above $5 billion.

A request for comment from Reuters was met with silence from the corporation.

According to the Times, the layoffs affect around 3% of the company's overall workforce. Amazon recently said it would halt all corporate recruiting for the foreseeable future.

In preparation for a possible economic collapse, Amazon is the latest US corporation to make significant cuts to its employment base. It's rare for the online retailer, which traditionally places a premium on stability over the holiday season, to make such a move, The New York Times reports, suggesting that the global economy is faltering. This is in stark contrast to a matter of months ago, when the corporation was struggling to retain talent in a competitive labor market and had more than increased the ceiling for the cash pay of its technical staff.

Earlier this week, Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, announced it will be laying off more than 11,000 people, or 13 percent of its staff, in an effort to reduce expenses. Twitter Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Snap Inc. are some of the other firms in the market.

Companies that hired heavily in response to the epidemic, when demand for everything from e-commerce to cloud services was at an all-time high, are now struggling due to slowing economic growth and the growing cost of labor and transportation.

Consumer demand has fallen as a result of rising prices and borrowing expenses, and as a result, many businesses are weighing whether or not to lay off employees.

The firm warned of low sales in the last three months of the year last month, when it posted lower-than-expected revenue for the quarter ending in September. This is the greatest shopping season in North America due to the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas holidays. This month it said it will stop hiring for corporate positions for an indefinite amount of time.

Amazon stock has down around 40% so far this year, but it has recently recovered some of those losses and was trading down only 2% at its low.

SOURCE:NEWS AGENCIES