Amazon is freezing corporate hiring in its retail business, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The Seattle tech giant is the latest to slow hiring plans amid a broader economic downturn and high inflation. Others, including Google and Meta, have also stopped adding employees.
Amazon will not freeze hiring for cloud computing jobs, according to The New York Times, which reviewed a copy of an internal announcement.
Most of Amazon’s revenue comes from retail, although Amazon Web Services is more profitable.
We’ve reached out to Amazon for more details and will update the story when we hear back.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said earlier this year that after doubling fulfillment capacity and hiring hundreds of thousands of workers to meet demand during the pandemic, the company is determined to rein in costs and empower its consumers Business returns to profitability.
Amazon acknowledged in its first-quarter earnings report that it added more warehouse space than needed during the pandemic, resulting in an additional $2 billion in costs during the quarter.
In the company’s second-quarter earnings report last July, Jassy said in a statement: “Despite persistent inflationary pressures on fuel, energy and transportation costs, the more manageable costs we mentioned last quarter Progress has been made, especially in terms of productivity or our fulfillment network.”
Second-quarter revenue of $121.2 billion was up 7% year over year and exceeded the upper end of Amazon’s guidance. The same year-over-year growth rate was also seen in the first quarter — Amazon’s slowest growth rate in 20 years.