Posted on Mar 22, 2023
Amazon cuts another 9,000 jobs signaling new era for the company
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Amazon delivered another dose of uncertainty to employees Monday morning: CEO Andy Jassy announced another 9,000 jobs will be eliminated in the coming weeks, making for a total of 27,000 cuts by the company so far this year.
Amazon had already carried out 18,000 layoffs earlier this year — the largest round of cuts in the company's history. Until now, the company has had a seemingly insatiable appetite for growth.
But Amazon and its Big Tech peers have been letting thousands of workers go in recent months, a sign of a sea change in an industry that once seemed able to generate unlimited wealth and opportunity in the U.S. economy.
Amazon had already carried out 18,000 layoffs earlier this year — the largest round of cuts in the company's history. Until now, the company has had a seemingly insatiable appetite for growth.
But Amazon and its Big Tech peers have been letting thousands of workers go in recent months, a sign of a sea change in an industry that once seemed able to generate unlimited wealth and opportunity in the U.S. economy.
Amazon cuts another 9,000 jobs signaling new era for the company
Posted from kuow.org
Amazon
Jobs
Employment
Economics
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 1
Everything I've seen regarding the tech sector lay-offs isn't related to their ideologies or an uncertain economic outlook.
It's simply the other shoe dropping after we changed our lives for COVID.
During COVID, the tech sector underwent "the great expand". Facebook, Amazon, Zoom, etc. quickly increased their workforce to handle a much higher demand from a population that was insulating itself from the normal ways we interacted with the economy. Meanwhile, other sectors of our economy cratered, especially the hospitality and service industry.
After the economy started to reopen and most people "started getting back to normal", those industries started recovering and the part B to that is now the tech sector is suffering because the demand for their services isn't what it had been over the past couple of years.
For example, looking at Amazon's employees (information from macrotrends.net), in 2020 Amazon did an almost 63% increase in the number of employees they had and added another ~24% in 2021 - in those two years, they had doubled their workforce from ~800k to 1.6M employees.
Hiring actions at a company are partly reactionary and anticipatory - in other words, some are hired for the demands of now and others are hired for the demands of tomorrow. The difference depends on what the job responsibilities entail (you can easily hire another guy to work packaging/loading and it will take a short time to onboard them ... not so if you're looking for higher skilled individuals that need to understand the inner-workings of the company).
While the present demand in Amazon is still there it is significantly dropping off from previous years. By the end of 2020, their revenue had a 37% increase over 2019 and a 27% increase in 2021. However they only had a 9% increase in revenue 2022 and actually posted the first net income loss in the last 10 years.
This is where all those 'anticipatory' jobs come in .. They hired based on a view of expansion that isn't occurring - a correction in the workforce if you will.
At least, that's my 2 cents worth.
It's simply the other shoe dropping after we changed our lives for COVID.
During COVID, the tech sector underwent "the great expand". Facebook, Amazon, Zoom, etc. quickly increased their workforce to handle a much higher demand from a population that was insulating itself from the normal ways we interacted with the economy. Meanwhile, other sectors of our economy cratered, especially the hospitality and service industry.
After the economy started to reopen and most people "started getting back to normal", those industries started recovering and the part B to that is now the tech sector is suffering because the demand for their services isn't what it had been over the past couple of years.
For example, looking at Amazon's employees (information from macrotrends.net), in 2020 Amazon did an almost 63% increase in the number of employees they had and added another ~24% in 2021 - in those two years, they had doubled their workforce from ~800k to 1.6M employees.
Hiring actions at a company are partly reactionary and anticipatory - in other words, some are hired for the demands of now and others are hired for the demands of tomorrow. The difference depends on what the job responsibilities entail (you can easily hire another guy to work packaging/loading and it will take a short time to onboard them ... not so if you're looking for higher skilled individuals that need to understand the inner-workings of the company).
While the present demand in Amazon is still there it is significantly dropping off from previous years. By the end of 2020, their revenue had a 37% increase over 2019 and a 27% increase in 2021. However they only had a 9% increase in revenue 2022 and actually posted the first net income loss in the last 10 years.
This is where all those 'anticipatory' jobs come in .. They hired based on a view of expansion that isn't occurring - a correction in the workforce if you will.
At least, that's my 2 cents worth.
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