Amazon India likely to lay off several employees: Report

Amazon is likely to lay off several employees in India across divisions as part of a global plan to deal with slowing sales as consumers scale back on online shopping, according to a report.

The layoffs in India could be more than a few hundred employees out of its large workforce of about 100,000, however, the exact number of affected people in India is not yet finalised, an Economic Times report noted, citing multiple sources.

“The retrenchment is happening here (India) and discussions are underway on the numbers. There is a sense it might be relatively higher as compared to peers like Meta-owned Facebook and others where India was not affected in a big way,” an individual aware of the matter, told ET.

The New York Times said in a report on Monday that Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in “corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week”. These 10,000 people who could be let go represent roughly 3% of Amazon's corporate employees and less than 1% of its global workforce of more than 1.5 million, according to the report.

In India, Amazon runs several businesses, including ecommerce, data centre, and Prime Video. The layoffs in India would be across engineering and other departments, and could impact a relatively smaller part of its total workforce in the country, according to ET.

“As part of our annual operating planning review process, we always look at each of our businesses and what we believe we should change. As we’ve gone through this, given the current macro-economic environment (as well as several years of rapid hiring), some teams are making adjustments, which in some cases means certain roles are no longer necessary. We don’t take these decisions lightly, and we are working to support any employees who may be affected,” Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon told YourStory.

Last month, Amazon’s muted third-quarter earnings as well as disappointing fourth-quarter projections led the company’s stock to plummet as much as 20%. Its third-quarter earnings were severely impacted by unpredictable consumer shopping habits and inflation.

Globally, tech companies have announced layoffs as part of their cost-cutting efforts. Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company has decided to reduce the size of its team by about 13%, cutting over 11,000 jobs. Earlier this month, Elon Musk reduced half of Twitter’s workforce, or about 3700 jobs, at the social media firm.

This copy has been updated to include a comment from Amazon.