When even the biggest online retailer in the world starts the year by cutting tens of thousands of jobs due to a rapidly deteriorating economic environment, then you know that the outlook for 2023 is a whole lot uglier than we could’ve imagined. In fact, Amazon’s CEO just announced that incoming layoffs will be nearly 50 percent higher than previously estimated as the company grapples with slower growth, declining sales, plummeting profits, and a grim stock market performance. Fears of a severe downturn are stirring the e-commerce giant to aggressively cut costs in preparation for even tougher circumstances for businesses in the months ahead. Consumers are seeing their purchasing power evaporate while interest rates rise and unemployment rates start to climb once again. What we’re about to face next may come as a shock for many Americans. Amazon’s new CEO, Andy Jassy, who took over the role in July 2021, is in an aggressive cost-cutting mode as the company confronts the compounding effects of four quarters of disappointing results, slumping sales across the board, and a gloomy economic landscape for 2023. On Wednesday, the executive announced that Amazon is cutting over 18,000 jobs, almost 50% higher than its December projection that around 10,000 positions would be slashed. The looming job cuts represent the single largest number of layoffs announced by an online retailer since the industry began aggressively downsizing last year. The current trend of belt-tightening has raised questions amongst investors about whether the financial problems faced by the online retailer in the past few quarters will persist as the recession accelerates. In the fourth quarter, Amazon disappointed Wall Street with a holiday season forecast that woefully missed analysts’ expectations. The company’s stock fell about 20% after releasing its earnings outlook. And its stock closed the year 50% lower than at the beginning of 2022. Analysts say Amazon is on pace for its worst year since 2008 when it dropped 55%. The only other year that was worse was during the dot-com crash of 2000 when the company lost 80% of its value. And many big companies are also having to implement sobering cost-reducing measures to brace for the challenges that are right at our door. In recent weeks, a number of CEOs have been admitting that they failed to accurately access consumer demand, and now they’re watching their rosy projections turn darker and darker. Even Goldman Sachs revealed plans to layoff up to 8% of its staff in the first half of January, a person familiar with the matter told Insider in December. “We continue to see headwinds on our expense lines, particularly in the near term,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said at a conference last month. Morgan Stanley and Citi Bank are also planning to cut roles this year. According to data cited by the Wall Street Journal from Layoffs.FYI, a site that’s been tracking layoffs since the start of the pandemic, tech companies alone slashed more than 150,000 in 2022 — compared to 80,000 in 2020 and 15,000 in 2021. And the latest job cuts report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed overall, layoff announcements surged a whopping 649% from 2021 levels, and they are likely to climb even higher in the months ahead. 2023 is set to be a “hungover” year after the pandemic downturn, and the past couple of years of inflation growth. Sooner or later, six-digit layoffs will start being reported. Unfortunately, these job cuts mean that our population will suffer immensely for yet another year.
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