Amazon announces 9,000 job cuts

Amazon announced on Monday it will lay off 9, 000 corporate and technology workers, eliminating jobs in addition to the 18,000 job cuts undertaken by the company in the last few months.

“As we’ve just concluded the second phase of our operating plan (OP2) this past week, I’m writing to share that we intend to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks—mostly in AWS, PXT (People, Experience, and Technology), Advertising, and Twitch. This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.

The 9,000 job cuts, which will be completed by mid to late April, are in addition to the massive 18, 000 layoffs that the company undertook since November last year.

Jassy said that “given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount” adding that the “overriding tenet of our annual planning” this year was to be leaner.

Jassy acknowledged people may question why the additional 9,000 job cuts were not announced together with the previous lay-offs.

“The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said.

Technology giants Google, Microsoft and Facebook have announced massive job cuts in the last few months, amid global economic uncertainty. Digital consumption soared during the years of the pandemic, prompting companies to diversify portfolios and scale up hiring.

But as consumers cut back on their digital footprint as normalcy returned after the pandemic, companies have been forced to restructure and cut costs.

Last week, Facebook-parent Meta had said it will lay off another 10,000 workers and will not fill another 5,000 positions, announcing the second round of significant job cuts by the tech major in four months.

The latest move came after Meta slashed approximately 13 per cent of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs in November last year, in the single largest round of cuts in the company’s history.

In a Facebook post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said the job cuts will take place “over the next couple of months.” “We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May,” he wrote.

In January this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company was slashing 12,000 jobs.

A day before Google’s announcement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said his company will lay off 10,000 workers, or less than five per cent of its total workforce, as the technology giant aligns its cost structure with revenue and customer demand.