As the second significant staff reduction at the online retailer this year, Amazon will eliminate 9,000 positions across its global business. The organization said the cuts would fall for the most part in its cloud administrations, publicizing and Jerk livestreaming units. They occur more than two months after Amazon announced that its staff-cutting plans had been expanded to include over 18,000 employees. It also announced separate plans to close three UK warehouses and seven delivery stations in January, affecting over 1,200 additional jobs.
In a letter to employees, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy said that the company had added a lot of employees over the past few years, but that the uncertain economy has forced it to choose between cutting costs and cutting staff. More than 1.5 million people worldwide are employed by Amazon.
The business announced earlier this month that it would be suspending construction on a portion of its second headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of a pattern of systematic cost reduction across the board. Since at least 2022, Amazon has also slowed down the global expansion of its network of distribution centers, warehouses, and other facilities, sometimes even canceling planned projects.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, made a move that is comparable to the second round of deep cuts. After announcing 11,000 job cuts in November of last year, it announced plans to cut another 10,000 positions this year and imposed a hiring freeze last week.
Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion (£36 billion) acquisition of Twitter in the fall, the company has also announced multiple rounds of layoffs due to a sharp decline in advertising bookings, which account for the majority of its revenue. Microsoft, Alphabet, the owner of Google, and Salesforce, a business software company, are among the other tech companies that have made significant layoff announcements.
According to the website Layoffs.fyi, tech companies worldwide laid off more than 150,000 workers last year. In 2023, 139,000 more layoffs were announced, including Amazon’s most recent announcement. Tech companies have been cutting jobs and adjusting their cost bases as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the uncertain economic conditions in major markets like the US.
