The Seattle Times reports that Amazon, the city’s largest employer, “appears to be seeking the smallest number of new employees in the city in years after a feverish, four-year growth spurt that more than doubled its head count … Open job postings at Amazon’s headquarters, which stood at more than 9,000 as recently as June, have declined sharply and steadily in the last few months.”
The slowdown, the story notes, “is a reminder that Amazon’s frantic expansion during the last few years — contributing to a boom that nudged the city’s unemployment rate near record lows, pushed housing costs to a record high, and sparked a debate about the company’s civic role in Seattle — won’t last forever.” It is attributed by sources within the company as reflecting “hiring freezes or postponements, reorganizations to reduce redundancy or layers of management, and, in at least one case, cutbacks in travel spending.”
Ironically, it also comes as Amazon is evaluating hundreds of proposals from around the continent for what has been dubbed HQ2 - a second headquarters that would be built elsewhere, and in which Amazon would invest $5 billion and to which it would bring some 50,000 jobs.
Amazon has not commented on the slowdown in hiring.
The slowdown, the story notes, “is a reminder that Amazon’s frantic expansion during the last few years — contributing to a boom that nudged the city’s unemployment rate near record lows, pushed housing costs to a record high, and sparked a debate about the company’s civic role in Seattle — won’t last forever.” It is attributed by sources within the company as reflecting “hiring freezes or postponements, reorganizations to reduce redundancy or layers of management, and, in at least one case, cutbacks in travel spending.”
Ironically, it also comes as Amazon is evaluating hundreds of proposals from around the continent for what has been dubbed HQ2 - a second headquarters that would be built elsewhere, and in which Amazon would invest $5 billion and to which it would bring some 50,000 jobs.
Amazon has not commented on the slowdown in hiring.
- KC's View:
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There seems to be general agreement that the city of Seattle, despite the fact that Amazon has helped to make it a 21st century city with enormous growth and prosperity, has not invested enough in the care, feeding and nurturing of the company, which is why it has begun looking to see if there are greener pastures elsewhere.
The interesting thing is that while there may be general agreement about this fact, some see it as a positive (because Amazon has enabled a housing boom that is seen as hurting the middle class) and some see it as a negative (because Amazon is, well Amazon).
