Amazon Bans New Hiring: Crisis Slows Down The Growth

Bigger, better, further is now a thing of the past at Amazon too. The US shipping giant has announced a “hiring freeze” – so for the time being, no new employees are being hired. This applies to all so-called “corporate” positions in the retail division.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report that Amazon does not want to hire any new employees in its retail division for the time being. This regulation does not apply to the various department stores and shipping centers of the group or the extremely profitable cloud division, but to the business positions within the retail department.

In concrete terms, this means that Amazon will no longer hire developers, technicians, and engineers, but also sales and marketing or other employees in the department responsible for operating the sales platform. The regulation is said to apply for the rest of 2022.

Only work for Amazon from 2023

For the time being, the stop on new hires even applies to new employees who came to their interview before October 15 and were accepted. According to the sources of the reports from the USA, they should also not take up their position within Amazon until the new year.

At Amazon, too, the years of massive growth have meanwhile weakened significantly this year as a result of the sharp rise in inflation rates and reduced demand. In 2020 and 2021, online retail companies still made record sales because many people ordered from Amazon even more frequently than before during the corona lockdown.

According to Amazon, it had around 1.5 million employees worldwide in the second quarter of 2022. In the first three months of the year, there were 100,000 more employees, so Amazon recently reduced the number of workers in its shipping and storage centers due to the drop in demand. Now the crisis is also affecting the better-paid positions.