Amazon is laying off another 9,000 employees

Amazon is facing another wave of layoffs. After the group had already cut 18,000 jobs since November 2022, another 9,000 employees have now had to leave the company.

The corona pandemic has given Amazon a real boom. In order to cope with this, the US group has its own workforce almost doubled. While Amazon still employed around 800,000 people in 2019, the number in 2021 was already 1.6 million.

But this boom has now come to an end. Because the US group had to cut around 18,000 jobs between November 2022 and January 2023. Now another 9,000 employees are to lose their jobs, like Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a memo to staff writes.

Layoffs at Amazon: What are the plans of the US group?

Amazon plans to cut around 9,000 more jobs in the coming weeks, the memo says. The deletions should primarily affect the cloud division AWS, human resources, the advertising area and the live streaming subsidiary Twitch.

This was a difficult decision, but we believe it is best for the company in the long term.

Jassy justifies the renewed wave of layoffs with the currently prevailing “uncertain economic situation”. There is an “uncertainty” “in the near future” that has prompted the company to “tighten the workforce”.

Why isn’t Amazon laying off its workforce all at once?

In his memo, Jassy also explains why there is now another wave of layoffs and why the company has not cut all jobs at once.

Accordingly, not all teams had progressed that far with their planning in the fall. Now, however, after the second phase of the annual budgeting process, the company has received feedback on this from all areas.

Switch fails to live up to expectations

While according to Jassy it is not yet clear in all areas which positions are to be cut, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has already commented on his area.

It says in a blog postthe streaming service will have to lay off a little more than 400 employees.

In order to run our business sustainably, we have made the very difficult decision to downsize our workforce.

The reason is the “current macroeconomic environment” that has affected Twitch’s business. The streaming service has fallen short of expectations in terms of user and revenue growth.

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