Amazon plans 10,000 job cuts as Bezos warns of US recession

The news was first reported by the New York Times and would represent the largest cuts in Amazon’s history – about 3% of its corporate employees and less than 1% of its global workforce.

The retail giant’s cuts will reportedly focus on its devices unit, which houses voice assistant Alexa, as well as its retail division and human resources.

It comes as fellow tech giants such as Meta, formerly Facebook, and Twitter have also announced large job layoffs. Meta Platforms announced last week it would be cutting around 11,000 – or 13% of its workforce – to cut costs, while Twitter has pledged to cut around half of its 7,500 global staff under new owner Elon Musk.

The news comes as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos warned that he believes the US is either in or heading towards a recession and called for people to “batten down the hatches” in a Tweet.

“The probabilities say if we’re not in a recession right now, we’re likely to be in one very soon. My advice to people whether they’re small business owners is take some risk off the table,” he later told CNN. 

“If you were going to make a purchase, maybe slow down that purchase a little bit. Keep some dry powder on hand and wait a bit.”

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