Amazon is laying off 9,000 employees
Amazon is set to lay off another round of 9,000 employees in the upcoming weeks. This was announced by Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy in a blog post sent to employees on Monday.
According to the CEO Jassy, the decision to streamline its costs and headcount comes amidst an "uncertain economy and uncertainty that exists in the near future." The company also marked its slowest year of growth in 2022.
He added that the company's latest round of job cuts will primarily impact staff working in its Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon People eXperience and Technology (PXT), advertising, and Twitch businesses.
The development comes just months after the e-commerce giant in January this year said it will lay off over 18,000 employees, amid a tech industry crunch in the past year, bringing its total job cuts to staggering 27,000 layoffs.
This number sums up the largest round of layoffs in both the company's history and the entire tech industry. The company’s global workforce reached over 1.6 million at the end of 2021, up from its 798,000 headcount in 2019, after it went on a hiring spree during the Covid pandemic.
Similarly, Meta Platforms (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) had also declared a second round of layoffs, affecting 10,000 of its employees in addition to the 11,000 who were laid off in November last year as part of a cost-cutting exercise.
The global tech industry continues to hit scary numbers of layoffs not seen before as the cooling global economic climate continues to grip the industry. According to the layoffs tracking site, Layoffs.fyi, close to 150,000 tech employees have had their job cut so far in 2023.