American multinational company, Amazon, has revealed that it will lay off over 18,000 members of its workforce.
The layoffs will primarily affect the company’s human resources and e-commerce organizations, and will be communicated to the company’s staff starting January 18.
Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, disclosed this in a public staff note, Reuters reports.
Advertisement
“Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles.
“We are working to support those who are affected and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support,” Jassy said in the note.
Media in the US had reported late last year that the company planned to let go of 10,000 people after Amazon announced the layoffs but did not give a specific figure.
The CEO however explained that the sudden nature of this announcement was “because one of our teammates leaked this information externally.”
“This year’s review has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years.
“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” he said.
The job cuts amount to 6% of Amazon’s staff strength, which is about 300,000 people for the corporate workforce.
With more than 1.5 million workers, including warehouse staff, Amazon is America’s second largest private employer of labour.
Amazon’s announcement is the latest in a series of major downsizing actions in the tech sector of recent.
Billionaire businessman, Elon Musk, bought Twitter in October and proceeded to fire half of the platform’s employees (about 3,700 people).
In November, Mark Zuckerberg announced that 11,000 Meta staff, which made up 13% of the company’s workforce, would lose their jobs.
Canadian multinational e-commerce company, Shopify, also announced that it laid off about 10% of its staff in July 2022.
Most of the companies attributed the layoffs to mistakes in yearly projections after they underwent mass hiring following the rapid growth the ecommerce and online community experienced during the COVID 19 pandemic.