Amazon Stock Price Plunges To Lowest Since Early Pandemic, Down 49% In 2022

Amazon shares have plunged to their lowest prices since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic after stock prices dropped by over 3% Monday.

The e-retailer's stock price dropped by about 3.4% from $87.86 to $84.92. It is Amazon's lowest close since March 16, 2020.

Throughout 2022, Amazon's shares have tumbled 49%. The company is on track to see its worst year since 2000 when the dot-com crash caused Amazon to lose more than 90% of its value in two years. At the time, Amazon share prices had been more than $100 and dropped to $10 after the bubble burst.

Amazon is not the only big tech company to see its stock prices fall throughout 2022. Nasdaq Composite, for instance, has lost roughly $7.4 trillion over the past year and is on the cusp of losing to the S&P 500 in consecutive years.

Microsoft has lost $700 billion in market cap. Meta, Facebook's parent company, lost about $600 billion in value this year. Tesla also lost 57% of its value this year.

Tech companies have seen their share prices fall through 2022 due to higher costs tied to rising inflation, supply chain constraints and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

For Amazon, however, the plunging share prices have also been caused by the company's slowing growth in its core retail business. In June, Amazon reported that it earned $121.2 billion in revenue over the past three months. While it was up by 7.2% from a year earlier, it was down from 7.3% the previous quarter. Additionally, it was the company's slowest growth in over 20 years, per The New York Times.

Amazon has also been forced to cut back on its workforce after expanding rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last month, Amazon announced it was laying off at least 10,000 employees working in its money-draining units, including those focused on Amazon voice-assistant Alexa and ebook reader Kindle. Employees in the human resources department were also impacted by the layoffs.

The layoffs represent less than 1% of the company's global workforce and 3% of its corporate employees.