Amazon.com Inc. is planning to let go about 10,000 employees in a round of layoffs that could begin as early as this week, the New York Times reported today.

It’s estimated that the layoffs would affect less than 1% of Amazon’s workforce, which stood at 1.6 million full-time and part-time employees at the end of 2021. The company had about 798,000 employees at the end of 2019. 

The Times reported today that the upcoming job cuts will primarily affect corporate and technology roles at Amazon. In particular, most of the layoffs are expected to take place at the company’s devices business, retail division and human resources group. 

Amazon’s devices business is responsible for the development of the popular Echo smart speaker lineup as well as other devices such as the Kindle e-reader. Last week, it was reported that the business has been the focus of an internal cost-cutting review along with a number of other units.

Amazon’s retail division, another part of the company that is expected to be affected by the upcoming layoffs, operates supermarkets as well as several other types of brick-and-mortar venues. The division earlier this year shuttered 68 stores in the U.S. and the U.K. The shuttered stores reportedly included Amazon Books locations and pop-up kiosks as well as 4-star stores, which carried highly rated products from Amazon’s e-commerce marketplace.

Over the last few months, the company has also scaled back its presence in certain other areas. Amazon has reportedly stopped developing Scout, a package delivery robot first introduced in 2019, and recently discontinued its Amazon Care telehealth service. However, the healthcare sector continues to be a focus for the company: It inked a $3.9 billion deal to acquire primary healthcare provider One Medical in July.

More recently, Amazon earlier this month announced a hiring freeze affecting corporate roles. The company stated that it expects the hiring freeze to remain in place for a few months, but added that there are some areas where it will continue to recruit new employees. Amazon also stated at the time that “we still intend to hire a meaningful number of people in 2023.”

Several other major tech companies have announced hiring freezes and workforce reductions in recent weeks. Twitter Inc. earlier this month reportedly laid off about half of its workforce, while Meta Platforms Inc. let go 11,000 employees, or about 9% of its workforce a few days later. Apple Inc., in turn, has reportedly paused most recruiting initiatives as part of a hiring freeze that is expected to remain in effect for several quarters. 

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