Amazon will be laying off around 1,000 employees in India as part of its global layoffs, which are set to impact as many as 18,000 of its global employees, Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.

This retrenchment exercise is said to impact 1 per cent of its 100,000 employees in India. 

The e-commerce platform has cited an uncertain economic environment as a reason for the layoffs, the report added.

"Between the reductions, we made in November and the ones we're sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles. Several teams are impacted; however, the majority of role eliminations are in our Amazon Stores and People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organisations,"  said Andy Jassy,  Amazon chief executive officer (CEO) in his blog post.

As of December 31, 2021, Amazon employed approximately 16,08,000 full-time and part-time staff.

In an earlier blog post, Jassy said, “In November, we communicated the hard decision to eliminate a number of positions across our Devices and Books businesses, and also announced a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in our People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization. I also shared that we weren’t done with our annual planning process and that I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023.”

Amazon India reportedly informed the Indian Labour Ministry in November 2022 that the company has seen employees leave voluntarily. The development came after the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) requested the government to intervene over the alleged layoffs at Amazon India.