The cold is pressing! Many big sellers are laying off employees crazily. Is Amazon unable to bear it?

The cross-border e-commerce industry in 2022 can be described as a cold wind. Under the influence of the general environment, cross-border enterprises have to cut expenses in order to maintain the normal operation of the company. Layoffs have become one of their means of self-protection.

The turmoil continues, and many domestic big sellers are laying off employees in various ways!

Since 2022, layoffs have been common among domestic retailers, with many choosing to directly lay off large numbers of employees.

A major 3C seller had its link blocked and announced 700 layoffs...

A large retailer in Guangzhou was reported to have laid off nearly 2,000 employees......

A company selling products worth billions of yuan in Shenzhen's South China City laid off 4,000 employees...

A well-known cross-border retailer in Shenzhen directly laid off 80% of its employees, leaving only 500 employees...

In addition to direct and violent layoffs, many big sellers have adopted various methods to force employees to leave.

After violent layoffs, a big retailer in Guangzhou started to cut salaries for all employees.

It is understood that the company previously laid off a large number of employees, and spent tens of millions of yuan on compensation. However, the company began to cut salaries for all employees because its performance was affected.

Most employees' salaries were reduced by 10%-20% , executives' salaries were reduced by 40%, and all overtime pay and attendance bonuses were cancelled. The previous monthly commission performance was also adjusted to be paid every two months.

It goes without saying that the adjustments made by the company are actually aimed at allowing employees to leave on their own.

In addition to actions such as salary cuts and performance deductions, some big sellers even give their employees long vacations and let them stop working and wait for their employees to leave.

It is understood that a Shenzhen cross-border company directly asked its employees to stay at home for 6 months . During the 6-month extra-long vacation, the company will pay the employees the minimum guaranteed salary in accordance with regulations. Of course, the company will also decide whether the employees should end their vacation based on the specific circumstances.

Many people believe that the Shenzhen salesperson's practice is actually a disguised layoff. It only pays employees the minimum guaranteed salary for 6 months. This money is not enough to support various living expenses such as rent and food for Shenzhen "workers". Employees will definitely resign if they can't stand it. In this way, the company's purpose of layoffs is achieved. After all, the company needs to pay N+1 salary for proactive layoffs.

It is understood that many cross-border sellers in China are having a hard time . Transformation is difficult, too much inventory has caused a shortage of funds, and layoffs or salary cuts have become the most normal situation. Some small and medium-sized sellers are also in danger due to the overall environment and can only lay off employees to save their lives .

After layoffs, the worst hit are the workers, whose direct source of income is cut off .

It’s still okay for those who received compensation, but many who were forced to resign by the company are truly in tears.

Some workers said that they were suddenly notified of layoffs, and their compensation has not yet been settled. Faced with the monthly car and mortgage payments, they suffer from anxiety and insomnia every night ...

For ordinary working class people, especially middle-aged employees, this winter is really cold.

The current economic situation has caused many big sellers to suffer heavy blows and fall from the altar. Even Amazon’s number one seller has gone from bankruptcy to closure.

Packable , a popular seller on Amazon's US site , has filed for bankruptcy protection in a US court, while also undergoing liquidation procedures, laying off employees and eventually shutting down its business . It is understood that the main reason for Packable's bankruptcy was the continued decline in the company's business due to the ongoing supply chain crisis, and the subsequent failure to go public and obtain more financing , which ultimately led to its bankruptcy.

It is reported that Pharmapacks, a brand under Packable, was once the largest seller on Amazon's third-party market in the United States, and was also a top seller at Walmart, mainly selling health, personal care, beauty and household products.

On the Amazon platform, searching for Pharmapacks-related products, you can find that many products dominate the BSR list, and the number of reviews for its products is as high as tens of thousands.

Packable 's final bankruptcy made many people sigh. Even Amazon's top sellers had no choice but to leave the market under multiple blows .

Can’t hold on any longer, the technology industry is facing a wave of layoffs!

Despite the hot sales at home and abroad, big tech companies are also having a hard time.

Since 2022 , affected by high inflation and concerns about economic recession, many major technology companies have begun to lay off employees.

According to the latest survey data released by Layoffs.FYI, a layoff tracking agency , the total number of layoffs in the US technology industry in 2022 exceeded 153,000. The figure was 15,000 in 2021 and 80,000 in 2020.

The hardest hit areas of layoffs in the U.S. technology industry in 2022 were the consumer and retail sectors, with a total of approximately 40,000 layoffs, of which Amazon's layoffs accounted for half of the layoffs in the retail sector.

However, Amazon's layoffs continue.

In November 2022, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company was laying off employees and that the layoffs would continue until 2023.

But on January 4, Andy Jassy announced in a memo to employees that Amazon plans to expand layoffs to more than 18,000 employees , mainly in the company's retail and technology ( PXT) departments .

It is understood that this round of layoffs will be Amazon's largest layoff in nearly 28 years, exceeding the previously expected 10,000 people. It is also the largest layoffs announced by a large technology company to date .

As of the end of September last year, Amazon had a total of more than 1.5 million employees , including warehousing and transportation positions , which means that the latest round of layoffs will account for about 1% of the total number of employees , and the layoffs will mainly be concentrated at the corporate level.

While the specter of layoffs has hung over Amazon for months as the company acknowledged it hired too many employees during the pandemic , the increase in the total number of layoffs suggests the company's outlook has grown bleaker.

In the post-epidemic era, consumers have gradually returned to their pre-epidemic shopping habits and returned to offline shopping. The world's largest online retailer has been adapting to the impact of the slowdown in e-commerce business growth since last year.

In the third quarter of this year, Amazon 's net sales were $127.1 billion, up 14.7% year-on-year, but lower than the market expectation of $127.6 billion; net profit fell 9% from the same period last year to $2.872 billion. Subsequently, Amazon's stock price fell all the way, and its market value fell from a record closing level of $1.88 trillion in July 2021 to about $879 billion, becoming the world's first listed company to lose $1 trillion in market value.

In addition to Amazon, Salesforce , the world's leading cloud service SaaS company, also suddenly announced on January 4 that the company will lay off approximately 8,000 employees in the next quarter , accounting for nearly 10% of the total number of employees , and will also reduce office space.

Also on Jan. 4, video-sharing platform Vimeo said in a regulatory filing that it would cut about 11% of its workforce.

According to data released by Layoffs.FYI, other companies with a large number of layoffs in 2022 include Booking.com, Cisco and Twitter. Booking.com cut a total of 4,375 jobs, Cisco cut 4,100 jobs, and Twitter cut 3,700 jobs.

In 2022, continued inflation and the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes have put American consumers under tremendous pressure from the cost of living, and businesses are struggling. Especially for American technology companies, overall revenue and profit growth have been unusually slow, and many companies are even facing bankruptcy, closure, and shutdown.

Many companies achieved explosive growth in revenue at the beginning of the epidemic, and recruited a large number of employees to expand their business. However, in the post-epidemic era, the economic situation in the United States continues to be turbulent, and the business volume of most companies is facing shrinkage. Take DoorDash as an example. In the third quarter, DoorDash's operations suffered a loss of US$308 million . Throughout 2022, the company's total losses reached 67.9%. Last month, DoorDash announced a layoff of 1,250 people, accounting for about 6% of its total employees.

In the context of global economic turmoil, many companies are struggling to survive, and "surviving" has become a consensus among many companies.

How to survive the current market downturn has become a question that every cross-border person has to think about.

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