Amazon’s expanded job cuts will affect over 18,000 employees

Amazon is cutting more jobs than it had previously planned, CEO Andy Jassy has admitted in a blog post. Back in November, reports came out that the e-commerce giant was eliminating 10,000 jobs, just as other companies in the tech sector had announced layoffs of their own. Now, the company is expanding its job cuts, and between the employees who’d already lost their jobs and the ones losing theirs in the near future, Amazon will be eliminating over 18,000 roles in the company. 

Jassy said majority of the upcoming layoffs would be from its retail and recruiting divisions. As The Wall Street Journal notes, Amazon benefited from the COVID lockdowns over the past few years, since people had to shop online more often than before. The company reportedly added hundreds of thousands of employees to keep up with the surge in demand — and then launched cost-cutting reviews to see which units weren’t making profit. It then froze hiring, closed brick-and-mortar stores and shut down business units.

When news broke that Amazon was planning sweeping layoffs, Meta had also just revealed that it was letting more than 11,000 of its employees go. Like Amazon’s executives, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg significantly increased Meta’s investments following a large revenue growth due to the pandemic. However, people’s spending habits eventually went back to pre-pandemic trends, leading to a smaller revenue for the company. More recently, Slack owner Salesforce revealed that it’s cutting 10 percent of its workforce and closing down offices. The company also grew rapidly during the pandemic and can’t sustain its bloated workforce in the current economy. 

Amazon will be cutting more jobs than Meta did by the time it’s done. Jassy said the company will reach out to impacted employees starting on January 18th, so the layoffs will likely take place over the coming weeks. He added that Amazon will offer them packages that include a “separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits and external job placement support.”