Amazon began laying off thousands of more employees Wednesday, as the online retailer and cloud computing giant continues the largest job cuts in its history just months after an initial round of 10,000 job cuts.
The Seattle Times and multiple other outlets reported Amazon made the staff reductions in its human resources and stores division, as the company is expected to lay off about an added 8,000 employees. Doug Herrington, Amazon’s worldwide retail chief, said in a memo the company would begin to notify employees by email Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.
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Here’s what to know about Amazon’s layoffs:
Amazon to lay off over 18,000 employees
Amazon began making layoffs to its devices organization, retail division and human resources divisions in November, cutting about 10,000 employees.
On Jan. 4, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the company planned to lay off more than 18,000 employees “between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today.” The additional layoff notifications would begin Jan. 18, Jassy said.
Amazon didn’t specify to USA TODAY how many cuts would be made to certain departments, but Jassy previously said the majority were being made in its Amazon Stores and PXT (People, Experience, and Technology) organizations.
How many employees does Amazon have?
Amazon had over 1.5 million employees as of October 2022.
What is Amazon is saying about the layoffs?
Jassy said in his Jan. 4 note the company will be providing severance packages to affected employees, including separation payments, transitional health insurance benefits and external job placement support.
“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so. These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure,” he said. “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. Companies that last a long time go through different phases. They’re not in heavy people expansion mode every year.”
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Amazon, Microsoft and more tech companies lay off employees
Amazon’s news comes the same day Microsoft announced it would be reducing its workforce by 10,000 people through the end of the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year (ending March 31).
They aren’t the only tech companies to recently lay off employees; there were at least 154,000 layoffs from more than 1,000 tech companies last year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that has been tracking tech layoffs since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
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More than 26,000 jobs have been cut in 2023 so far, as Layoffs.fyi creator Roger Lee previously told USA TODAY he doesn’t see layoffs “going away anytime soon.”
