Amazon To Lay Off 9,000 More Jobs After Cutting 18,000 Jobs In January

Amazon announced on Monday that the company will eliminate 9,000 more jobs in addition to the 18,000 jobs that were cut in January.

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago,” Amazon CEO  Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees.

“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. The same is true for this note as the impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted. Once those decisions have been made (our goal is to have this complete by mid to late April), we will communicate with the impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies). We will, of course, support those we have to let go, and will provide packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.”

Amazon plans to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks—mostly in AWS cloud services, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch.

“For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount, Jassy added. “This made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole. However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount. 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.”