This would represent a little less than 1% of the group's current payroll, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of September, not counting seasonal workers, recruited during periods of increased activity, in particular for the Christmas holidays. end of the year.

According to the New York Times, the positions affected by the workforce reductions will be located in the Amazon Devices department (electronic devices equipped with the Alexa voice assistant or Kindle e-readers), in the retail division as well as in human resources.

However, the breakdown by country is not specified.

The American daily also notes that the total number of dismissed employees is likely to change.

If the number of 10,000 job cuts were confirmed, it would be the largest social plan in the company's history.

Contacted Monday by AFP, Amazon did not react immediately.

The company had already announced a hiring freeze in its offices two weeks ago.

And its workforce has already shrunk from the start of the year, when it employed 1.62 million people full-time or part-time.

Amazon has been hiring with a vengeance during the pandemic, to meet the explosion in demand, doubling its global staff between early 2020 and early 2022.

But the American retail giant saw its net profit drop 9% year on year in the third quarter.

And for the current quarter, the crucial period of the end of the year holidays, the Amazon company anticipates anemic growth by its standards, between 2% and 8% over one year, and an operating profit of between 0 and $4 billion, compared to 3.5 for the same period of 2021.

Meta, Snap, Twitter, etc.

Even Amazon Web Services (AWS), the group's remote computing (cloud) activity, which has so far shown insolent growth and profitability, saw its revenues increase more moderately this summer, climbing 27% , compared to 39% a year ago.

"Macroeconomic uncertainty has led to an increase in the number of AWS customers wanting to control their costs" and thus save on their technology expenses, explained the group's chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, during a conference call. presentation of the results at the end of October.

Large platforms whose business model is based on advertising are facing budget cuts from advertisers, who are reducing their expenses in the face of inflation and rising interest rates.

Last Wednesday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced the loss of 11,000 jobs, or about 13% of its workforce.

At the end of August, Snapchat cut around 20% of its workforce, or more than 1,200 employees.

Twitter, freshly acquired by Elon Musk, for its part fired about half of its 7,500 employees.

The economic crisis is affecting most major tech companies which have hired heavily during the pandemic.

Two Silicon Valley companies, online payment services specialist Stripe and chauffeur-driven car booking platform Lyft, also recently announced large-scale layoffs.

© 2022 AFP