Amazon CEO: More Than 18,000 Jobs Will Be Eliminated

Amazon plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers.

This total includes the reductions made in November and ones that were announced Wednesday (Jan. 4), Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a Wednesday message to employees that was also posted online.

Several teams will be impacted, but most of the layoffs will be in the company’s Amazon Stores and People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) branches, Jassy said.

“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy said. “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure; however, I’m also optimistic that we’ll be inventive, resourceful and scrappy in this time when we’re not hiring expansively and eliminating some roles.”

Jassy had announced in November that Amazon’s job cuts would continue into 2023, adding to those that had already been announced, as the company’s leaders were only midway through their annual operating planning review.

In his Wednesday message, he reiterated what he had said in November: that the economy is uncertain, that the company had hired rapidly for several years, and that leaders across the company were participating in the annual planning process and prioritizing the things that matter most to customers and the long-term health of the business.

During the eCommerce boom through the pandemic, Amazon added hundreds of thousands of workers. As of September, the company employed 1.5 million people, with most of them working in its warehouses, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wednesday (Jan. 4).

As PYMNTS reported last week, Amazon’s stock price has dropped as well.

The firm suffered a $900 billion, 50% contraction in its stock over the previous 12 months. It dipped from an all-time high in 2021 to a three-year low in 2022.

Beyond Amazon, layoffs have been made throughout the tech sector.

According to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs in the industry, tech companies eliminated more than 153,000 jobs in 2022, compared to 15,000 in 2021 and 80,000 between March and December 2020.

The top five companies with the most tech layoffs last year were Amazon, Meta (11,000 jobs), Booking.com (4,375 jobs), Cisco (4,100 jobs) and Twitter (3,700 jobs), according to the report.