Amazon to lay off 9,000 more workers — in addition to 18,000 announced in previous cuts

Amazon announced on Monday that it plans to eliminate another 9,000 jobs in the next few weeks in addition to the 18,000 cuts announced in January — the first and most significant layoffs in the company’s history.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy released a blog this week about the second phase of the company’s operating plan, which included news of the layoffs. He stated that most of the cuts would impact teams working in Amazon Web Services, People Experience and Technology Solutions, advertising, and the streaming service Twitch.

“This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” Jassy wrote.

He explained that the “uncertain economy” and the “uncertainty that exists in the near future” led to the decision to downsize.

The company plans to dedicate more resources to “key long-term customer experiences.” As a result, Amazon will continue to conduct “limited hiring” in those strategic areas.

“This initially led us to eliminate 18,000 positions (which we shared in January); and, as we completed the second phase of our planning this month, it led us to these additional 9,000 role reductions (though you will see limited hiring in some of our businesses in strategic areas where we’ve prioritized allocating more resources),” Jassy stated.

As far as why Amazon did not choose to announce the latest role reductions in January, Jassy explained that “not all of the teams were done with their analyses” and instead, the company “chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible.”

The teams impacted by the latest round of job cuts are “not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted,” he noted.

Jassy said that he anticipates final decisions to be made by mid- to late April.

The 18,000 layoffs announced earlier this year, which will impact workers in retail, devices, recruiting, and human resources departments, will begin in November and extend into January.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced Monday that the Amazon-owned company plans to reduce the size of its staff by over 400 people.

“Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations,” Clancy stated. “In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce.”

Employees affected by the layoffs will receive a separation package from Amazon, including payments, transitional health insurance benefits, and job placement support.

According to the tracker Layoffs.fyi, the technology industry has eliminated more than 140,000 positions so far this year.

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