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, showing how the project that it had pitched as an economic jolt is instead hitting a slowdown.
Following a much-hyped sweepstakes across North America, the tech giant in 2018 made a deal with Virginia officials to locate half of its second headquarters in Arlington, just outside D.C.: In exchange for as much as $750 million in taxpayer subsidies from the commonwealth, itagreed to build a massive new campus near the Pentagon and fill it with tens of thousands of new employees.
The company was expected to gradually add 25,000 new jobs at HQ2 by the end of the decade, according to its agreement with Virginia, and receive money from the commonwealth as it hit annual hiring targets — such as 2,665 new jobs last year.
The Washington Post
