Tech city Seattle is going through job losses from tech giants Meta and Amazon. The cuts are part of a wave of layoffs by tech companies dealing with the rough economy. Recently, Amazon was reported to be preparing for layoffs that could total as many as 10,000 corporate and tech workers. Many of those jobs will be taken away from local workers.
The recent reports of Amazon’s potential layoffs come after Meta (Facebook) announced layoffs last week. Seattle lost 419 jobs as employees were laid off at Meta’s Seattle office and 307 were laid off at the Bellevue office. In addition, Twitter, Snap, and Redfin also let go employees including 208 Twitter employees in Seattle.
The layoffs reportedly represent an estimated 3% of Amazon’s corporate workforce and less than 1% of its global workforce. It was also news that Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Tuesday which disrupted access to many popular sites.
Meta is also the parent company of Oculus, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Amazon provides cloud computing services to many governments, universities and companies, including The Associated Press. The total of 726 jobs lost represents about 9% of the company’s 8,000-person workforce in the region.
Meta’s larger cutbacks, numbering 11,000 people globally, represent about 13% of its total workforce. The company had not previously disclosed the number of workers affected by the cuts in the Seattle region. Washington is low unemployment at 3.7%, and for some an increase in personal income, “a solid economy” despite economic uncertainty. The state is on track to see an uptick in retail sales by 6 to 8% for the end of 2022.
