USA: As it prepares for slowing growth and a potential recession, Amazon.com Inc. The company plans to cut 10,000 jobs, the largest ever reduction in workforce at the e-commerce giant.

According to those with knowledge of the situation, the layoffs are likely to impact Amazon's retail divisions, human resources and the group of devices that are in charge of the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart speakers.

Amazon is the most recent US company to make significant cuts in its workforce, in order to prepare for a potential economic downturn. Facebook subsidiary Meta Platforms announced last week that it would eliminate more than 11,000 posts to cut costs. Others include Elon Musk-owned Snap Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Twitter Inc.

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Amazon teams decide where to cut staff as part of the company's annual planning process, according to the people, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a private matter.

With sales growth slowing and the economy uncertain, CEO Andy Jesse has vowed to streamline operations. The Seattle-based company's prediction that the holiday shopping season will be the slowest in its history last month worried Wall Street and caused shares to crash.

The cost cuts over the past few months, according to some longtime Amazon employees, who spoke on record under condition of anonymity to discuss the internal matter, are the most serious ones ever. The upcoming layoffs were first reported by the New York Times.

The world's largest online retailer has spent a significant part of this year adjusting to a sharp slowdown in e-commerce growth as consumers return to their pre-pandemic routines.

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Before expanding the hiring ban to the company's corporate groups, Amazon postponed the opening of new warehouses and stopped hiring in its retail division.

Jessie has in recent weeks intensified its search for cost-cutting among experimental and failing businesses. The company disbanded teams working on various projects including delivery robots, children's video calling devices and telehealth service.

At the end of September, Amazon employed 1.54 million people, most of whom were hourly workers who packed and shipped goods in warehouses or worked at Whole Foods Market and other retail establishments.

Amazon has its Seattle headquarters, a developing campus in the Washington, D.C., area, as well as the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, and Boston, where most of the company's employees are located.

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After years of frantic expansion, Amazon's Devices and Services division, which produces Alexa and consumer electronics, is particularly susceptible to downsizing. Although the group's voice-activated devices have seen strong sales, they haven't evolved into a must-have shopping portal as their creators had hoped.

To avoid the dotcom bust in the early 2000s, Amazon fired thousands of employees. Since then, the business has experienced sporadic periods of largely self-imposed austerity to combat corporate bloat, sometimes holding off on hiring for months on large teams.