Amazon Reportedly Halts Corporate Hiring For Retail Business

America’s second-largest employer announced a hiring freeze following an earlier announcement that US job openings plunged in August. This could be even more evidence the labor market is cooling. 

According to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times, Amazon recruiters have been instructed to halt all hiring for “corporate roles, including technology positions, globally in its Amazon stores business, which covers the company’s retail and operations, and accounts for the bulk of Amazon’s sales” by mid-month. As of Monday, 20,000 openings were posted in that division. The memo stated that the company’s cloud computing division wouldn’t be impacted.

The memo stated recruiters are instructed to tell all job candidates that the Seattle tech giant wasn’t in a hiring freeze. It went on to say all job requisitions should close immediately. It said new job openings would be available until 1Q23. 

And why would Amazon recruiters lie to job candidates that the company isn’t in a hiring freeze, but according to an internal memo obtained by NYT, they are? It could cause worried people to stop applying to unfrozen departments like AWS.  

Professional community website Blind had one anonymous account post four days ago: “Amazon hiring freeze is real.” Here’s a snapshot of what the alleged Amazon employee said about the freeze:

“The corporate hiring freeze is the latest sign that cost-controlling measures are hitting Amazon’s core retail and technology teams as well,” NYT said. Perhaps this reflects a faltering consumer, battered by negative real wage growth, the highest inflation in decades, maxed out credit cards, and personal savings on empty. 

Amazon’s hiring freeze comes amid the threats of a recession because of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening to combat inflation. Meta and Google have been other big tech companies to pause hiring as the economic outlook remains cloudy. And today’s drop in job openings in August confirms labor market cooling is likely underway.