Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it would cut 9,000 jobs in its cloud services, advertising and Twitch units, the latest Big Tech company to announce a second round of layoffs in the face of a possible recession.
The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the company said it would lay off in January.
CEO Andy Jassy said the company had added substantial amount of staff in the past few years, but the uncertain economy has forced it to choose cost and headcount cuts.
“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. 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,” Jassy said in a memo.
Numerous tech giants including Microsoft Corp, Salesforce Inc, Alphabet and Meta Platforms have slashed thousands of jobs in recent months after pandemic-led hiring sprees left them overstaffed. Amazon follows Facebook-parent Meta in becoming the second bellwether to announce a second round of cuts.
Last week, Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said it would cut 10,000 jobs this year, following the first mass layoff in the fall, which eliminated more than 11,000 jobs.
Amazon last month said operating profit may continue to slump in the current quarter, hit by the financial impact of consumers and cloud customers clamping down on spending. Sales from its lucrative cloud-computing division slowed during the fourth quarter.
With inputs from Reuters and AP
