Amazon plans to lay off 9,000 employees on top of 18,000 axed in January: CEO

ANI

Washington, March 20

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Monday he was cutting 9,000 more jobs from the online retail giant's workforce, following the 18,000 that were axed in January.

The latest cuts come after the company announced earlier this year that it was eliminating some 18,000 positions as part of a major cost-cutting bid at the e-commerce giant.

"Given the uncertain economy... and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount," Jassy said in a memo to staff.

Jassy said the fresh round of job cuts will take place in the coming weeks, and will mostly impact people working in the following divisions: Amazon Web Services, People Experience and Technology Solutions (PXT), advertising and Twitch.

"This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term," Jassy wrote in the memo.

"Some may ask why we didn't announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago," Jassy added. "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." The latest layoffs at Amazon come amid a spate of job cuts in the technology industry in recent months, as the sector confronts a whiplash in pandemic-induced demand for digital goods and services and broader macroeconomic uncertainty.

Amazon, like a number of other Big Tech companies, also rapidly grew its headcount during the early days of the pandemic. Jassy wrote on Monday that the hiring "made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole." "However, 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," he added.

Just last week, Facebook-parent Meta said it was laying off an additional 10,000 workers, on top of the 11,000 job cuts announced late last year.  

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