Amazon goes forward with another 9000 job cuts adding to the tech layoff pile

On Monday, Amazon announced that they will be laying off another 9,000 employees from the company, bringing the total number of job cuts this year to 27,000. Out of the global Amazon workforce, these layoffs represent around 8%. Following the news about the layoffs, Amazon’s stocks fell by 1.25% on Monday.

Amazon going forward with another round of layoffs indicates how the tech industry isn’t done with its large-scale layoffs. Meta announced on March 14^th that they would be letting go of another 10,000 workers. This isn’t the first time that Meta has laid off its staff. Just four months ago, Meta laid off 13% of its staff, affecting the livelihoods of 11,000 people.

Ever since the start of 2023 until the 20^th of March, more than 500 tech employers have laid off almost 140,000 workers. The tech industry hasn’t seen a contraction like this since the dot-com crash. Almost every major tech player is announcing job cuts today with alarming rapidity. Some significant tech employers who have announced job cuts in 2023 are Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter, and IBM. Together, these companies make up almost half of the total tech job cuts.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to his employees that the layoffs will affect those working in Amazon Web Services, PXT, and Twitch. These jobs include human resources, advertising, and live streaming. Exactly who gets the cuts will e revealed to the employees by mid-April. Jassy cites the current economic uncertainty and says that they have chosen to be more streamlined in the costs and headcount.

These latest job cuts will affect 2,300 Amazon workers in Seattle, Washington. This is the base of the company’s operations. Amazon also announced earlier in March that it will close eight Amazon Go convenience stores. Construction at the HQ2 project in Washington D.C. has also been halted by Amazon management. Around 8,000 new jobs were to be created at Amazon in Arlington, Virginia, this summer. Amazon has also created a return-to-office mandate requiring employees to come to the office at least three days a week.

Last year, the job cuts affected those working in Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition activation division. Next to go were employees of the automated stores, drones, consumer retail divisions, and job recruiters. The warehouse division seems to be the only sector of Amazon spared from the job cuts.

According to Andy Jassy, the company did not announce every planned layoff in January due to the cost assessment not being completed at the time. The peak in online shopping during the pandemic years got Amazon a boom in sales and profits. However, by the end of 2023, the online sales revenue was dropping.