Amazon Is Said to Plan to Lay Off Thousands of Employees The job cuts of approximately 10,000, which would start as soon as this week, would focus on the company’s devices organization, retail division and human resources.The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Amazon’s planned retrenchment during the critical holiday shopping season — when the company typically has valued stability — shows how quickly the souring global economy has put pressure on it to trim businesses that have been overstaffed or underdelivering for years.In recent months, Amazon has also closed or pared back a smattering of initiatives, including Amazon Care, its service providing primary and urgent health care that failed to find enough customers; Scout, the cooler-size home delivery robot, that employed 400 people, according to Bloomberg; and Fabric.com, a subsidiary that sold sewing supplies for three decades.John Blackledge, an analyst at Cowen & Company who has covered Amazon for a decade, said his calculations showed Amazon’s core e-commerce business had been losing billions this year."