Amazon employees should brace for another round of layoffs in the "next few weeks," following the latest memo from the Big Tech's CEO, Andy Jassy. In addition to thousands of workers that have been laid off by Amazon since last November, another 9,000 employees are about to get axed as economic uncertainties forced tech giants to take drastic measures for their survival.
Amazon Cutting off 9,000 Positions to Affect Twitch, Advertising and Cloud Divisions
Engadget verified the existence of the said memo from Amazon itself. Per the latest reports, the current number of 9,000 may still be inflated as Amazon has yet to come up with a final decision regarding its "second phase" of operational adjustments. The final number is likely to be confirmed only by mid-to-late-April. Until that time, Amazon employees will be left in the dark as they have no clue if they will be laid off. Nonetheless, Jassy said that Amazon is striving the make the announcements "as soon as possible" so that the workers to be affected can prepare earlier.
For this latest bout of workforce reduction, the company's advertising and cloud computing divisions are the ones to be impacted, as well as Amazon's live streaming service, Twitch. These units brought in big revenues for the company over the last few years and were almost thought to be untouchable. Twitch, in particular, had experienced tremendous growth during the early pandemic as more people who were staying at home availed of its live streaming service.
The move to let go of additional thousands of employees is part of Amazon's effort to be more stable and have sufficient resources to use for better investments in the future. The first report about Amazon layoffs was released back in November, to which around 10,000 employees feared losing their jobs.
However, another update in January increased the number of expected layoffs to 18,000, showing that the tech giant is ready to eliminate more jobs than it previously planned. The job cuts at that time affected the recruiting and retail divisions of the company.
Jassy emphasized in the memo that Amazon employees who will be affected will receive severance pay and transitional health insurance coverage. The company is also willing to help the laid-off workers to search for their next jobs elsewhere.
Related article : Amazon Sets For Another Round Of Layoffs Affecting 18,000 Employees
Amazon, Other Big Tech Companies Affected by Economy Returning to Pre-Pandemic Condition
According to Reuters, after the anticipated laying off of 9,000 employees in the coming weeks, Amazon would have already eliminated 27,000 jobs in just a few months, which amount to 9% of the company's massive 300,000 workforce.
Earlier in 2022, Amazon closed a number of its physical stores and started to reduce the size of some of its business units. Unfortunately for the workers, they had to brace for more uncertainties as Amazon's revenue takes a dive.
As The Wall Street Journal reported, Amazon enjoyed a sharp increase in revenue at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns, where more people resorted to online shopping than before. With the spike in demand, the Big Tech decided to take in hundreds of thousands of employees to keep up. At this point where the world has started to return to normalcy, the demand for Amazon's services is not as high as before, which resulted in a financial slump and ultimately, the reduction of workforce.
Amazon is not the only tech giant that announced mass layoffs for 2023. Meta is expected to boot 10,000 of its employees out of the company this year, in addition to the 11,000 who lost their jobs last fall.
