Amazon freezes hiring at its corporate offices

Amazon is joining the ranks of tech companies freezing their recruitment plans. Engadget has obtained a memo from Senior VP Beth Galetti (since published) revealing that the company will “pause” hiring at its corporate offices for a few months. The internet giant will still replace departing employees and hire new people in “targeted places,” Galetti wrote but there won’t be any significant expansion in the near future.

As with other companies, Amazon attributed its freeze decision to an “unusual macro-economic environment.” The firm doesn’t want to spend too much money growing its workforce in difficult financial conditions, to put it another way. Galetti added that Amazon still wants to hire a “meaningful number” of corporate workers in 2023, but that the online shopping giant will track the economy and adjust as it “makes sense.”

Amazon had no further comment. It hired aggressively during the height of the pandemic to keep up with a spike in online sales, but ran into trouble this year due to both a return to in-person shopping and mounting costs. The company posted a $2 billion loss during its second quarter (April through June) and cut 99,000 jobs, many of them warehouse workers. It also cancelled the launch of some facilities. In early October, it temporarily halted corporate hires for its retail business.

The pause comes weeks after Meta reportedly suspended all hiring, and months after big names like Apple, Google and NVIDIA have slowed their pursuits. Some companies are making additional cuts — Lyft just confirmed that it’s laying off 700 workers, or about 13 percent of its workforce, after cutting 60 positions in July.