Amazon plans to lay off another 9,000 employees globally in the coming weeks, CEO Andrew Jassy said on Monday.
This is in addition to the planned layoff of 18,000 employees the e-commerce giant announced in January. The latest round of cuts will largely impact workers in Amazon’s advertising department, as well as on its video live streaming service, Twitch, and on Amazon Web Services and the People Experience and Technology Solutions team.
Amazon has recently invested heavily in the North of England, with thousands of people working at its fulfilment centres. Manchester is also the base of its first corporate office outside London.
Jassy said in a note to employees: “For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount. This made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole. However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”
The previous round of layoffs primarily impacted staff in Amazon store and its People Experience and Technology divisions. Jassy added that Amazon did not announce these reductions along with the January layoffs because the teams were not yet done conducting their analyses of the company.
Amazon’s most recent earnings report, covering the three months ended Dec. 31, saw it beat Wall Street expectations, although earnings were below what it made the previous year. Still, the company saw a surge in ad revenue, including a 23 percent holiday season improvement over the previous year. Most of Amazon’s ad revenue is related to its e-commerce business, rather than its streaming content.
Fellow US tech giant Facebook also recently announced a second round of layoffs, as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency.”
