China’s technology sector faces new round of lay-offs as global firms Ericsson, Tesla, Amazon and Intel continue to shed jobs

Only a few dozen employees at the Shanghai plant were told to leave, representing a tiny portion of the 20,000-strong workforce involved in the assembly of Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, but some showrooms across China are likely to face closure, the Post reported on Tuesday.

An AWS representative, however, said the report was “factually wrong” in terms of the compensation. On the job cuts, AWS “has identified a few targeted areas of the organisation [that it] needs to streamline” and that the firm is “committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition to new roles in and outside Amazon”, the representative said.

An AWS employee, who asked not to be identified, said that “the rising wind forebodes a coming storm”, citing an old Chinese poem about negative signs. Another Amazon employee at a non-AWS unit said that some colleagues were just waiting to be sacked and get their severance pay.

US chip maker Intel, which initiated a new round of lay-offs earlier this month at its sales and marketing unit, could see its mainland China operations affected as early as this week, according to a report by Taiwan newspaper Economic Daily News, citing industrial rumours.

Intel did not immediately respond to an inquiry on Friday.

In spite of the retrenchment across the tech sector, China’s overall unemployment has remained flat. The overall urban unemployment rate stood at 5.2 per cent in March, compared with 5.3 per cent in the first two months of the year.