Amazon's Impact on Real Estate: Office Area Returns, Mass Layoffs, and the End of Remote Work

The American retailer Amazon is facing challenges in its home country. According to the website The Real Deal, the company is considering terminating office lease contracts in the US, aiming to save approximately $1.3 billion.

The main reason behind this decision, according to the narrative of the company led by Andrew Jassy, is the large number of employees working remotely. According to an internal source consulted by the US website, about 33.8% of Amazon's offices are empty.

Another recent controversial episode involves the company's physical supermarkets in the US and its cloud service solution, AWS. It was announced that the Just Walk Out technology, which allows customers to shop without going through checkout and pay using facial recognition, will be discontinued.

On the day following the announcement, hundreds of employees were laid off.  These employees worked remotely from India and were responsible for monitoring the purchasing service on the other side of the world. The company stated that the entire process was too expensive.

However, Amazon's situation appears to vary in different parts of the world. In Mexico, as reported by REsource, the company is investing $5 billion in a data center. In the Latin American country, the investment comes from AWS, the same division that carried out the mass layoffs.

In Brazil, layoffs have not been announced yet; however, internal sources reveal that Amazon is no longer implementing remote work and is requiring employees to work in the office for at least three days a week.