Amazon to lay off 10,000, biggest cuts in company history, reports say

Amazon is set to lay off around 10,000 employees, according to multiple reports Monday, which would mark the company's biggest round of job cuts ever — though a small fraction of its headcount.

Why it matters: November has been a brutal month for tech layoffs, as the industry adjust to a world of rising rates, falling demand and a hangover from over-hiring during the boom.

• Amazon's core business of selling stuff has been slowing this year, as folks are spending less time at home, Axios's Hope King reported last month. It has already said it expects the holiday season to be weaker than expected.
• Axios has reached out to Amazon to confirm the reports. The New York Times first reported the job cuts.

Zoom out: Including today's announcement, there have been more than 30,000 employees cut from the sector just in November — blowing away the numbers in April and March 2020.

• "November has been the worst month so far in 2022," said Roger Lee, who runs the site Layoffs.fyi, and has been tracking tech firings since the start of the pandemic.
• Other companies cutting staff this month that the site has tracked: Meta (11,000), Twitter (3,700), Salesforce (1,000), Stripe (1,000), Lyft (700), Redfin (850), Opendoor (550) and Zendesk (350).

• While each company is facing its own set of challenges, they’re all nipping business units that are either no longer needed in full force during a downturn (such as in human resources) or aren’t performing (Amazon Care and Scout, for example).

Thought bubble via Hope King: This year marked Andy Jassy’s first at Amazon’s helm — and the company is likely to proceed more cautiously when it comes to growth than it did during Jeff Bezos's time.

This story has been updated with additional details.