Tech jobs cull continues as Amazon axes another 9,000 staff
Tech culling continues as Amazon cuts another 9,000 jobs – laying off 18,000 just two months ago
Amazon is cutting an additional 9,000 jobs on top of the 18,000 employees it laid off just two months ago.
It brings the number of job losses in the tech sector since the beginning of last year to more than 300,000.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told staff, “This was a difficult decision, but one that we believe is best for the company in the long run.”
Rich List: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with his partner Lauren Sanchez. The tech giant is cutting another 9,000 jobs on top of the 18,000 employees it laid off just two months ago
The announcement came days after Facebook owner Meta said it would cut an additional 10,000 jobs on top of the 11,000 it cut last October.
Tech companies are cutting costs, as they have grown rapidly during the pandemic.
Amazon’s first round of job cuts hit the company’s brick-and-mortar branches, such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and other innovative divisions, such as the one that runs the Alexa virtual assistant.
The latest round includes more profitable parts of the company, including cloud computing unit AWS and the fast-growing advertising business.
Jassy, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, said the plans were rooted in building a “leaner” company – echoing Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg’s aspirations that 2023 be the “year of efficiency” must be.
Amazon boomed during the pandemic, benefiting from the boom in online shopping.
But the company suffered as the world reopened and the hunger for tech stocks waned. Amazon shares are down nearly 40 percent over the past year and well below their 2021 highs.
The news sparks fears about jobs in the UK, which is home to about 70,000 of Amazon’s 1.5 million global workforce.
Workers at Amazon’s Coventry warehouse staged a five-day strike earlier this month calling for better pay. GMB members had previously walked out on February 28 and March 2.
The union estimates that the union action will cost Amazon more than £2 million.
Dan Ives, technical analyst at Wedbush, said it’s not surprising that cost cutting is the number one goal for tech companies after an era of high spending during the pandemic.
Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Twitter and Spotify have all said they will be weight-loss teams in the coming months.
According to job tracking site Layoffs.fyi, more than 139,000 layoffs have been made since early 2023, on top of the 161,411 layoffs in 2022.