Amazon has fallen so far behind schedule in creating new jobs at its Northern Virginia headquarters that its workforce at those offices shrank last year, the company confirmed, underscoring how a project that it had initially pitched as an economic jolt is instead hitting a slowdown.
Following a much-hyped sweepstakes across North America several years ago, the tech giant made a deal with state and local officials to locate half of its HQ2 in Arlington, just outside D.C.: In exchange for as much as $750 million in taxpayer subsidies from Virginia, it agreed to build a massive new campus near the Pentagon and fill it with tens of thousands of new employees.
The company was supposed to gradually add 25,000 new jobs at HQ2 by the end of the decade, according to its agreement with the commonwealth, including more than 2,500 new jobs last year. Instead, it lost more than 200 existing positions in Arlington in 2023 a drop-off that will likely affect how much money it receives from the state. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Last year we made the tough decision to eliminate a small percentage of corporate roles and to slow hiring around the globe, which impacted our forecast growth in HQ2, Holly Sullivan, the companys vice president of worldwide economic development, said in a statement Monday evening.
Sullivan said the company has not abandoned its target of 25,000 jobs. She called the project a long-term investment and noted that there are 1,000 open positions at HQ2, where two soaring office towers part of a total $2 billion investment opened last year.
But amid a shift in work habits prompted by the coronavirus pandemic and a squeeze in the tech industry, the downturn in hiring marks another setback in the boost Amazon had initially promised to the area. Even as its contractor began installing utilities last month on an empty plot of land at HQ2, construction on another three office buildings and futuristic Helix supposed to go there has been on pause for more than a year.