E-commerce giant Amazon Inc., which has been expanding tremendously in Orange County in recent years, is closing one of its operations in Irvine, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letter filed with the state of California earlier this month.
Amazon announced it would permanently close its operations at its 45,000-square-foot warehouse at 2006 McGaw Ave. in Irvine. The 162 employees at that location will be offered positions elsewhere within the company.
Those positions, however, might not be in Orange County, meaning some of the affected employees could be displaced.
“We’re always evaluating our network to make sure it fits our business needs and to improve the experience for our employees, customers, and partners,” Amazon spokesman Sam Stephenson told the Business Journal in a statement.
“We’re supporting impacted employees to find new opportunities within Amazon, including at nearby fulfillment sites.”
Amazon, in its WARN letter, stated that the building closure would take effect by Nov. 7.
Amazon leases a 202,505-square-foot space nearby at 17871 Von Karman Ave., per CoStar data. The Von Karman location is Amazon’s first large-scale industrial facility in Orange County.
It is the latest string of closures for Amazon. The e-commerce retailer, which occupies large swaths of warehouse space across the country and around the world, also announced through a WARN letter that it is closing its operations in West Sacramento. Like in Irvine, Amazon is offering the 159 employees there an opportunity to accept jobs elsewhere within the company.
Amazon is shutting down some of its facilities as part of a plan to cut customer delivery costs and ramp up same-day deliveries and online sales, per the company’s latest earnings call.
The reallocation of 162 jobs at 2006 McGaw Ave. comes about two years after Amazon announced plans to create more than 2,500 corporate and technology jobs in “Tech Hub” locations such as Irvine.
Amazon specifically announced in 2022 it would create 800 corporate and tech jobs and take up 116,000 square feet of office space it leased at Irvine Co.’s Spectrum Terrace.
The e-commerce retailer added it invested more than $81 million and added more than 170,000 full- and part-time jobs in California since 2010. Some of that money and those jobs were allocated to Amazon fulfillment centers, Whole Foods market locations and Tech Hub office space in Irvine, San Diego and Santa Monica.
Companywide, Amazon employs 1.5 million people, making it the world’s second largest employer, according to the research firm Statista. Amazon currently has a $2 trillion market cap (Nasdaq: AMZN).
