Amazon's value drops by 1,000 billion; 10,000 employees will be laid off this week

[German]US online seller Amazon is currently experiencing stormy times. The company has suffered a dramatic loss of value in its share price, which reaches 1,000 billion US dollars. It has now been rumored that Amazon is likely to make major layoffs this week. Around 10,000 employees will probably have to leave.

1,000 billion $ loss in value

I had read it here and here days ago: Amazon has become the first publicly traded company to lose $1 trillion (1,000 billion) in stock market value crisis. That's almost as much as the loss in market value of Google parent Alphabet, which now stands at $1.13 trillion, the report said.

Amazon's stock has lost about 48% of its value in 2022 alone and is a far cry from its peak price in July 2021, when the company's market capitalization reached nearly $1.9 trillion, according to Bloomberg. The share price of the world's largest online retailer closed at $86.14 per share on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. That left Amazon's market capitalization at only about $879 billion..

Mass layoffs at Amazon

Insiders report that Amazon will announce major layoffs this week due to the economic situation. This is according to a report in the New York Times. According to the report, about 10,000 employees in the company's corporate and technology divisions were to be laid off starting this week. Separately, the Wall Street Journal quoted a source as saying that the company plans to lay off thousands of employees. Neither article is freely available, however.

The numbers now cited would represent the largest wave of layoffs in the company's history.  However, the reported layoffs would be less than 1% of Amazon's global workforce and 3% of the company's employees in terms of magnitude. According to the reports, Amazon's equipment organization, retail division and human resources department are the main areas affected.

Amazon joins the list of U.S. tech companies laying off massive numbers of employees. Recently, Twitter laid off half its workforce. And Facebook also had to announce the layoff of thousands of employees.