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After Meta, Amazon has now announced a second round of mass layoffs. The e-commerce biggie will eliminate about 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks. This comes after it laid off more than 18,000 employees across various business units in January this year.
In a memo to employees on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is letting go of more employees to streamline costs amid an uncertain economy. He says the firm completed its second phase of planning and determined that it needs to further reduce headcounts. “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,” Jassy said. “This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term.”
According to the Amazon CEO, the latest layoffs will affect AWS (Amazon Web Services), PXT (People Experience and Technology) Solutions, Advertising, and Twitch businesses more than e-commerce. The company also plans to continue limited hiring in some of the businesses in strategic areas where it has prioritized allocating more resources. Jassy said Amazon will share more details about its plans in the coming months.
Amazon announces a second round of mass layoffs
A second mass layoff from Amazon isn’t surprising. The company went on a hiring spree in 2020 and 2021, when the coronavirus pandemic forced people indoors and e-commerce saw an unprecedented boom. Its global workforce more than doubled from about 798,000 at the end of 2019 to about 1.6 million at the end of 2021. But as things returned to normal in 2022, Amazon realized it had way too many headcounts.
The e-commerce giant started laying off employees in November 2022. While the company didn’t formally announce anything back then, reports said it will continue to fire more people in 2023. The first announcement came in January with an official figure of 18,000 job cuts. A couple of months later, Amazon let go of 9,000 more employees citing the same reason: an uncertain global economy.
As said earlier, Meta also recently announced a second round of mass layoffs. The Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram parent is cutting 10,000 more jobs, after firing 11,000 employees in November last year. It has also closed hiring for 5,000 open positions. Many other tech biggies have laid off employees at a mass scale over the past few months. Google parent Alphabet (12,000 job cuts), Microsoft (10,000), Disney (7,000), Dell (6,650), Twitter (more than 6,000), IBM (3,900), and PayPal (2,000) are to name a few.