David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images The company had already announced last month that it would freeze hiring for corporate roles in its retail business, but the latest update affects its other businesses. “We anticipate maintaining this pause for the next several months and will continue to monitor what we see in the economy and the business to adjust as we believe makes sense,” Galetti said. The retail giant embarked on a hiring spree during the Covid-19 pandemic as it struggled to keep up with the surge in online shopping due to the pandemic. Since then, it has moved to slow headcount growth as consumers have returned to brick-and-mortar stores and its retail business is no longer growing as rapidly as in recent years. Here is the full memo: With the economy in an uncertain position and in light of the number of people we’ve hired in recent years, Andy and the S-team decided this week to stop phasing new hires into our corporate workforce. We had already done this in some of our businesses in the last few weeks and added our other businesses to this approach. We expect to maintain this pause for the next several months and will continue to monitor what we see in the economy and the business to adjust as we believe makes sense. Generally, depending on the business or area of the company, we will hire backfills to replace employees who are moving on to new opportunities, and there are some targeted places where we will continue to hire people incrementally. We are facing an unusual macroeconomic environment and want to balance our hiring and investment by being cautious in this economy. This is not the first time we have faced uncertain and challenging economies in our past. While we’ve had many years where we’ve broadly expanded our headcount, there’s also been several years where we’ve tightened our belt and been more streamlined in terms of the number of people we’ve added. With fewer people currently hiring, this will give each team the opportunity to further prioritize what matters most to customers and the business and be more productive. We still plan to hire a significant number of people in 2023 and remain excited about our significant investments in our largest businesses, as well as newer initiatives like Prime Video, Alexa, Grocery, Kuiper, Zoox and Healthcare. If you have questions about how this hiring freeze for the next few months affects your team, please speak with your manager in the next few days. Beth
