Amazon layoffs much worse than expected, will hit 18,000

AppleInsider

Once layoffs are complete in the coming weeks, Amazon will have laid off more than 5% of its workforce to make investors feel better about earnings.

Amazon layoffs to reach 18,000 employees total

Tech companies are consolidating their workforce after a tough year in 2022. Apple announced it would slow its hiring, while Amazon has begun laying off large numbers of employees.

An earlier report said that layoffs would reach around 10,000 employees by the time Amazon was done. However, a new report by the Wall Street Journal, citing Amazon itself, says that total is set to exceed 18,000 in the coming weeks.

Amazon was among many companies to grow its workforce as a result of Covid-19. Demand for online shopping rose throughout 2020 and 2021, so Amazon doubled its logistics network and hired hundreds of thousands of employees.

As the world opened back up and in-person work and shopping resumed, Amazon felt the pressure. It started by cutting back on spending, freezing hiring, and ultimately deciding on layoffs. Amazon's 18,000 laid-off employees will represent the highest number of people let go by a tech company in recent months.

Employees targeted by the layoffs included those in the devices business, recruiting, and retail operations. It will result in a 5% overall reduction in corporate staff at Amazon.

So far, Wall Street is not impressed. The consensus is that the cuts do not go far enough, and Amazon needs to further trim costs.

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hmlongco

My problem with it is that it's largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Instead on cutting other costs or--heaven forbid--taking a minor short-term hit on profitability, at the first hint of trouble hundreds of companies rush to fire thousands to tens-of-thousands of employees who now, of course, aren't making an income, which means that they in turn cut their spending, which ends up cutting into company revenues...

And so the downward spiral perpetuates...

DAalseth

Employees targeted by the layoffs included those in the devices business, …

An admission that Alexa has been a flop. They sold a lot of them, but their idea that people would be sitting in the living room saying “Alexa, order me a box of detergent”, “Alexa, order me a new winter jacket” never happened. Of course a ham sandwich could have told you that way before it came to pass.

hmlongco said:

My problem with it is that it's largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Instead on cutting other costs or--heaven forbid--taking a minor short-term hit on profitability, at the first hint of trouble hundreds of companies rush to fire thousands to tens-of-thousands of employees who now, of course, aren't making an income, which means that they in turn cut their spending, which ends up cutting into company revenues...

And so the downward spiral perpetuates...

There’s a vary famous story of Henry Ford who decided to dramatically raise the wages he was paying the people in his factories. The result was that they took the extra income and bought Ford cars. Profits soared.  Well as you pointed out it works both ways. I’m old enough to remember the job cuts in the ‘70s, which degraded the economy, which led to lower profits, which let to more job cuts, and we ended up in a real mess by ‘77-‘80. The cycle works just like you said. 

But heaven forbid Bezos cut his d*** shaped rocket, or other vanity projects. 

Madbum

Yet Government keeps reporting high job numbers, which lets ferderal reserve keep hiking rates, destroying peoples lives , by keeping housing and rents unattainable .

something is rigged 

chadbag

They should put the people to work on profitable things. Grow your profits by doing interesting profitable things with them.  The problem isn’t too many people.  The problem is not using them in a profitable way.  

As is mentioned, you don’t grow by shrinking.  You grow by coming up with new and interesting products. 

davidw

DAalseth said:

Employees targeted by the layoffs included those in the devices business, …

An admission that Alexa has been a flop. They sold a lot of them, but their idea that people would be sitting in the living room saying “Alexa, order me a box of detergent”, “Alexa, order me a new winter jacket” never happened. Of course a ham sandwich could have told you that way before it came to pass.

hmlongco said:

My problem with it is that it's largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Instead on cutting other costs or--heaven forbid--taking a minor short-term hit on profitability, at the first hint of trouble hundreds of companies rush to fire thousands to tens-of-thousands of employees who now, of course, aren't making an income, which means that they in turn cut their spending, which ends up cutting into company revenues...

And so the downward spiral perpetuates...

There’s a vary famous story of Henry Ford who decided to dramatically raise the wages he was paying the people in his factories. The result was that they took the extra income and bought Ford cars. Profits soared.  Well as you pointed out it works both ways. I’m old enough to remember the job cuts in the ‘70s, which degraded the economy, which led to lower profits, which let to more job cuts, and we ended up in a real mess by ‘77-‘80. The cycle works just like you said. 

But heaven forbid Bezos cut his d*** shaped rocket, or other vanity projects. 

Ford paying his workers well and in turn they bought a Ford auto, had nothing to do with Ford profits soaring. All of Ford well paid employees could had bought a new Ford auto every year and it would not amount to a rounding error in the amount of cars Ford was selling every year. What immensely increased profits was the increase in productively. Ford paying his workers well, reduced workers turnover. This in turn reduced the amount of time Ford had to spend hiring new workers and training them.  Workers were more than happy stay with Ford. And the longer they stayed, the better they got at their job. The less days they are off sick. Which leads to more efficiency on the auto assembly line. The best auto mechanics went looking for a job at Ford because Ford was paying the most.

If a company profits soared because all their well paid employees bought their products, they would be out of business in a short time. One can find a way to make a perpetual motion machine, before a company that pays its employees twice that of their competition (Which was what Ford was paying)., have their profits soared because their employees are buying the products they are well paid to produce. Imagine how much more their profits will soar, if they just hired twice as many employees and pay them well?   

Remember, in the end, Ford was more profitable because he invented a way, with the assembly line, to produce an automobile faster, more efficiently and with less employees.

davidw

hmlongco said:

My problem with it is that it's largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Instead on cutting other costs or--heaven forbid--taking a minor short-term hit on profitability, at the first hint of trouble hundreds of companies rush to fire thousands to tens-of-thousands of employees who now, of course, aren't making an income, which means that they in turn cut their spending, which ends up cutting into company revenues...

And so the downward spiral perpetuates...

In case you haven't been following Worldwide current events, most companies have already taken a hit on short-term profitability (for the most part of last year.). What these companies are trying to do is to prevent a long-term hit on profitability going into this year or the chance of being non profitable. You don't think all the stock markets are down because investors are concern about employees being laid off, do you? The chances of the government corrections to combat high inflation leading to a  recession, is still high. And the government is not through correcting.

Consumers are already cutting their spending because of the higher prices and interest rate. Less consumer spending led to a hit on companies profitability. Which eventually leads to laying off of employees. Which leads to higher unemployment and even less consumer spending. But also allow companies to remain profitable even after lowering prices to maintain or increase sales. Which leads to reducing inflation. And reducing inflation is the government goal when they try to correct for high inflation by raising interest rates. The government goal is not to maintain high employment. But over-correcting might lead to a recession. A recession is not the cure for inflation, that governments wants to see happen. 

The downward spiral began when this administration put too much spending money in the hands of the consumers to combat the affect of the pandemic had on the economy. To the tune of $5T in less than 2 years.

rotateleftbyte

DAalseth said:

But heaven forbid Bezos cut his d*** shaped rocket, or other vanity projects. 

Baldy Bezos can't be seen to being outdone by Elon Twittler in Chief.

Besides, there must be a new island that he wants to buy and create the Kingdom of Bezos the Almighty
{This post is intended to be sarcastic.)

foregoneconclusion

davidw said:

The downward spiral began when this administration put too much spending money in the hands of the consumers to combat the affect of the pandemic had on the economy. To the tune of $5T in less than 2 years. 

Less than $1 trillion went to consumers. The top five areas that consumers spent the stimulus $$ was food, utilities, household/personal care products, debt and rent (in that order). That doesn't appear to be a frivolous spending spree, right? And the reality is that over 50% of what was being termed "inflation" in the media was really just profit taking by corporations. In other words, it was price increases unrelated to cost increases. Corporations just used the pandemic as a cover for price gouging. These are the same corporations that got a significant percentage of the $2 trillion tax cut in 2017. The corporate tax rate was dropped from 35% to 21%. Fast forward a few years and they're sticking it to consumers during a national health emergency. 

And remember, GDP dropped by 29% in Q2 2020 before going up by 35% in Q3 2020. That was followed by 5 straight positive growth quarters and then two negative growth quarters (-1.6%, -0.6%) and most recently a positive growth quarter of 3.2%. How does someone look at that and come to the conclusion that stimulus spending was too high?

Madbum

So what? Like anyone buys the SE

davidw

foregoneconclusion said:

davidw said:

The downward spiral began when this administration put too much spending money in the hands of the consumers to combat the affect of the pandemic had on the economy. To the tune of $5T in less than 2 years. 

Less than $1 trillion went to consumers. The top five areas that consumers spent the stimulus $$ was food, utilities, household/personal care products, debt and rent (in that order). That doesn't appear to be a frivolous spending spree, right? And the reality is that over 50% of what was being termed "inflation" in the media was really just profit taking by corporations. In other words, it was price increases unrelated to cost increases. Corporations just used the pandemic as a cover for price gouging. These are the same corporations that got a significant percentage of the $2 trillion tax cut in 2017. The corporate tax rate was dropped from 35% to 21%. Fast forward a few years and they're sticking it to consumers during a national health emergency. 

And remember, GDP dropped by 29% in Q2 2020 before going up by 35% in Q3 2020. That was followed by 5 straight positive growth quarters and then two negative growth quarters (-1.6%, -0.6%) and most recently a positive growth quarter of 3.2%. How does someone look at that and come to the conclusion that stimulus spending was too high?

No one said anything about frivolous spending. The fact that they were spending money that the government printed out of thin air, will eventually add to inflation. Consider this, if most of the consumers were spending their government money on survival essentials, then how did all these alleged greedy corporations make their massive profits that caused most of today's high inflation?

And that was just the stimulus checks. What about the added unemployment payments. The extension of unemployment payments. Loans that didn't need to be paid back to businesses to help keep paying their employees, even if they were closed down. There were unemployed workers that were making more money being unemployed than when they were working. Government workers still being paid their full salaries for not having to come to work. Here in the Bay Area, not one BART employee lost a penny in salary when ridership dropped by nearly 90% during the Pandemic and were no longer needed. Like most government workers during the pandemic.  Government is the largest employer and all government employees qualified for the stimulus checks (providing they met income requirements). Even though most received their full salary during the pandemic. All retire consumers that were already out of the work force, could qualify for the stimulus checks. The "stimulus" check is called that because the government wanted consumers to spend the money to stimulate the economy and it did. Quite well in fact. Only now, we are paying the price for it with high inflation. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-vs-private-covid-layoffs-11599606956

https://taxfoundation.org/total-covid-relief-unemployment-insurance/

Let's not forget the renters were no longer obligated to pay the rent as landlords were not allowed to evict them during the pandemic. Plus States like CA had a relief program to help renters pay for rent and utilities.

https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/program_overview.html ;

And then there was a relief program for landlords that lost income from renters that couldn't pay.

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-state-local-and-tribal-governments/emergency-rental-assistance-program

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/11/us/how-covid-stimulus-money-was-spent.html

Here's couple of good read about all this. Much better than the theory Sen. B. Sanders is spreading about corporate greed. Sen. Sanders is a Socialist or as he refer to himself, a Democratic Socialist. He is against of anything that is capitalism. Worse than Progressives like Sen. E. Warren.  And that's saying a lot.

This one explains the delay in inflation caused by each stimulus check.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4498214-inflation-is-just-beginning

This one explains the corporate profits

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/29/1139342874/corporate-greed-and-the-inflation-mystery

>University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers says corporate greed is a red herring and companies are not the source of inflation.

"My friend and economist Jason Furman says, 'Blaming inflation on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity,'" says Wolfers. "It is technically correct, but it entirely misses the point."<

 

Here's an article about Sen. Sanders and his views on capitalism. According to him, any profit made by any corporation, is greed.

https://econreview.berkeley.edu/is-sanders-actually-a-democratic-socialist/