In a memo issued to staff on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company will make another round of cuts, this time eliminating 9,000 more employees.
Amazon, like others in the tech industry, has continued to reevaluate its staffing needs following a first round of cuts that came at the end of last year. In total, the company will have eliminated upwards of 27,000 employees when this round of layoffs finishes.
The layoffs will affect Amazon’s cloud computing, human resources, advertising, and Twitch live streaming businesses, the memo said.
The decision to go through another layoff period comes as Amazon looks to streamline costs and prepare for the uncertain economy. Jassy also mentioned in his memo that the “uncertainty that exists in the near future” also played a role.
Amazon just finished its “OP2,” the internal name for the second phase of its annual budgeting process. Now Jassy says steps need to be taken to lean out the company.
“The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” Jassy said.
Like several other companies, Amazon is reducing its headcount following a massive hiring spree during the COVID-19 pandemic when needs in the tech industry were greater.
Facebook’s parent company Meta recently announced it would reduce staffing significantly this year after cutting jobs last November. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the news in a Facebook post, saying that “The world economy changed, competitive pressures grew, and our growth slowed considerably.”
Zuckerberg went on to admit that the recent struggles his company has faced have been a “humbling wake-up call.”
As for Amazon, at the end of 2021, the company’s global workforce was at 1.6 million after being at 798,000 in 2019.
Layoffs aren’t the only move being made by Amazon, as Jassy also said that a broad overview of the company’s expenses is coming as it prepares for economic struggles to come this year.
Despite the news, Jassy says he is optimistic about the company’s retail and web industry, which he called Amazon’s “largest business.”
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