Amazon pauses hiring for its corporate workforce

Amazon's logo on a delivery van in Chicago in October 2022. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Amazon will pause hiring people for new positions in its corporate workforce for "the next few months" in response to the economy being "in an uncertain place," the company said Wednesday in a memo.

Why it matters: The news comes after the company announced last month it would freeze corporate hiring in its retail business for the rest of the year, per the New York Times.

• It said the corporate hiring pause was also necessary because of how many people it hired in the last few years.

What they're saying: "In light of how many people we have hired in the last few years," leadership "decided this week to pause on new incremental hires in our corporate workforce," Beth Galetti, Amazon's senior vice president of people experience and technology, said in the memo.

• The team expects to keep the freeze in place for the next few months and adjust depending on the state of the economy and the business, per Galetti.
• "Depending on the business or area of the company, we will hire backfills to replace employees who move on to new opportunities," Galetti said, adding thatAmazon and would continue "incrementally" hiring in some areas.

The big picture: Over the past year, Big Tech went on a hiring splurge as companies focused on growth, but they will now have to reckon with the hiring uptick as they shift to belt tightening, Axios' Ina Fried reports.

• This includes Amazon, which ended the last quarter with 1,544,000 workers, up 5% from the 1,468,000 people it employed a year ago.

Amazon shares crashed last week after Amazon Web Services' revenue growth slowed last quarter, possibly reflecting people spending more time and money outside their homes.

• Other Big Tech companies, including Meta, Google parent company Alphabet and Amazon's cloud competitor Microsoft, also reported weaker results than expected, and they also have responded with ending leases, to hiring freezes and layoffs, Axios' Hope King reports.

Go deeper: Big Tech's hiring splurge makes cost cuts even harder

Editor's note: This story has been updated with new details throughout.

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