Amazon plans to lay off an additional 9,000 workers

“Given the uncertain economy we live in, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” said Mr. Jassy, ​​noting that the layoffs come after Amazon completed its annual planning process.

The company said earlier that it had cut 18,000 jobs.

Waves of job cuts have roiled the tech industry. Amazon is the latest company to enact more job cuts than previously expected. Last week, parent profile platforms on Facebook a company.

It said it would cut nearly 10,000 jobs over the coming months, the second wave of mass layoffs.

Amazon invested heavily in expanding its staff during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic as people shifted much of their shopping online. The company added about 800,000 employees, most of them in hundreds of its warehouses, between the end of 2019 and the end of 2021. When demand began to fall as consumers returned to brick-and-mortar stores, Amazon cut back areas of work that were unprofitable and froze hiring.

Mr Jassy said the 9,000 additional jobs had not been announced earlier because some teams had not completed assessments that determine which jobs should be cut. He said the cuts would end in mid-to-late April. Amazon had about 1.5 million employees worldwide at the end of December. It employed about 350,000 workers in the companies before laying off workers recently.

Since 2022, the number of layoffs at technology companies has reached about 300,000 workers, according to layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts in the industry.

Amazon has gone through one of the most difficult periods in its history. The company recently finished laying off 18,000 company employees, or about 5% of the total. The cuts were concentrated in the hardware, staffing and retail businesses.

In addition to the announced job cuts, Amazon has made other changes that will likely lead to a higher voluntary turnover rate than it has in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is not adjusting its stock-heavy compensation plans, which means many employees will effectively take pay cuts this year. Amazon recently announced a back-to-office plan starting next month that was not well received by some employees.

The job cuts for Amazon’s cloud computing unit come as cloud customers seek to save money on infrastructure and software costs, according to Rick Villars, an analyst at IDC. Meanwhile, he said, new growth opportunities for cloud businesses, such as artificial intelligence, have not made much of an impact so far.

“With Amazon being one of the biggest players in the cloud arena, they will be visible in their numbers,” said Mr. Villars. US cloud spending grew 27% in the fourth quarter, below the average growth rate of 31% in the previous four quarters, according to market analytics firm Synergy Research Group.

Amazon’s chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, said that month that the company had seen a continued slowdown in AWS spending as customers looked to rein in costs. Amazon’s advertising business, which has become an increasingly meaningful driver of sales, also experienced a slowdown in the fourth quarter, posting a 19% increase in sales. Mr. Olsavsky said that AWS will likely face challenges “in the next couple of quarters at least.”

AWS reported $22.8 billion in operating income last year. The rest of the company combined had an operating loss of $10.6 billion.

Amazon has also scaled back projects and pulled investment in certain regions. Earlier this month, it confirmed it was pausing construction of a massive corporate real estate complex near Washington, D.C., which it calls the Second Headquarters, or HQ2. While the first phase of its project is nearing completion, Amazon had originally planned to start the second phase of the project, which includes three 22-story office buildings, during the first quarter of 2023.

On the same day it revealed its plans for HQ2, it also said it would close eight Amazon Go cashless stores across Seattle, New York City and San Francisco on April 1. Including closing physical book stores in 2022. In recent months, the company has also canceled some projects such as the Amazon Smile charity program.

Amazon has grown rapidly during the pandemic, buoyed by the huge demand for its e-commerce services. But like many of its tech peers, it has been experiencing growth lately. The company warned in February that it could see a slower growth period, including in its profitable AWS business, which in the fourth quarter saw the lowest rate of growth since Amazon began separating segment performance in earnings.

–Dana Mattioli contributed to this article.

Write to Sebastian Herrera at [email protected] and Joseph de Avila at [email protected]

Corrections and amplifications
Amazon has about 350,000 corporate workers. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the company had 35,000 employees in the corporate ranks. (corrected March 20)