In November 2022, a report emerged that Amazon(AMZN) would lay off about 10,000 workers.
It had said the layoffs could begin right away that week and that they would focus on the company's devices, retail and human resources divisions.
Amazon had issued a weak holiday revenue forecast in October and had also announced slowing growth in its Web Services business, even though its third-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors at the time that "we recognize there's still a lot of opportunity to continue to improve productivity and drive cost efficiencies throughout our networks," according to TheStreet.
Amazon Adds to Layoff Total With new Announcement
In an updated announcement on Jan. 4, the company raised that number to more than 18,000, the Wall Street Journal reports.
That would be the highest number of lost jobs at one company in the technology sector in the last year.
The layoffs reportedly would be focused on corporate positions rather than its warehouse jobs.
Jassy discussed the report in a blog post on the aboutamazon.com website.
"As I shared back in November, as part of our annual planning process for 2023, leaders across the company have been working with their teams and looking at their workforce levels, investments they want to make in the future, and prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses," Jassy wrote. "This year’s review has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years."
"In November, we communicated the hard decision to eliminate a number of positions across our Devices and Books businesses, and also announced a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in our People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization, he continued. "I also shared that we weren’t done with our annual planning process and that I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023."
"Today, I wanted to share the outcome of these further reviews, which is the difficult decision to eliminate additional roles. Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles. Several teams are impacted; however, the majority of role eliminations are in our Amazon Stores and PXT organizations," Jassy wrote.
