Amazon is officially cutting ties with another 9,000 estimated workers. The giant announced on Monday that it would be making this difficult decision to manage upcoming economic uncertainty.
Within the past few months, Amazon has let go of nearly 27,000 positions, roughly 9% of its workforce of 300,000 people.
This announcement has man focusing in on Amazon’s highly-profitable cloud and advertising divisions. This major business driver was once seen as an undeniable force for the retail giant until recent economic concerns led the business’ customers to cut back on their spending on the platform.
As far as the future, many are foreseeing job reductions to big streaming player Twitch. The company recently saw cuts in November of 2022 focused on the devices, e-commerce, and human-resources sections. Many speculate that Amazon will finalize who will be terminated from this decision by April of 2023.
The decision comes as Amazon’s stock falls nearly 2% in succinct with these layoffs. The technology sector of the stock market has seen many corporations like Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc. cutting ties with many employees in what seems to be staggering amounts of layoffs.
Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc said it would also be cutting 10,000 jobs this year, kicking off what seems to be their second round of layoffs. The announcement came last week for the sector following the termination of nearly 11,000 job back in 2022.
In a note to staff that Amazon posted online, its CEO Andy Jassy said the decision stemmed from ongoing analysis of priorities and uncertainty about the economy.
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“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago,” he wrote. “The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall.”
He added, “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.”
Amazon said operating profit will continue to be slow amidst the rest of the first quarter of 2023. The company has scaled back on or even shut down entire services like its virtual care offerings for employers in recent months to combat even more layoffs.
