Amazon will cut “just over 18,000 jobs” at the company, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees on Wednesday, far more than previously expected by the e-commerce giant.
The layoffs will come in “multiple teams,” but the majority of the job cuts are taking place at the Amazon Stores group and its People, Experience and Technology (PXT) organization, Jassy said in the memo, which the company published on its blog site .
“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past and we will continue to do so,” Jassy wrote. “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure; However, I’m also optimistic that unless we hire heavily and eliminate some roles, we’ll be inventive, imaginative and scrappy during this time.”
The roughly 18,000 job cuts, which include Amazon’s layoffs last fall, account for about 1.2% of the 1.544 million full- and part-time employees the company reported as of September 30, 2022.
In November, Jassy announced that Amazon was cutting jobs in its Devices and Books divisions, and also said the company was making voluntary takeover bids for some PXT Group employees. He also told employees there will be “more role downsizing” through 2023 “as leaders continue to make adjustments.” At the time, the New York Times reported that Amazon would cut around 10,000 jobs.
At the Times’ DealBook conference in late November, Jassy said the cuts were necessary because the economy was “more uncertain” than Amazon executives had previously anticipated: “We just felt we had to rationalize our costs” , he said.
Jassy’s memo to Amazon employees on Wednesday about the job cuts came after the Wall Street Journal reported earlier in the day that the company planned to lay off “more than 17,000” employees. In an apparent reference to the Journal report, Jassy wrote: “We typically hold off communicating these findings until we can speak to those directly affected. However, as one of our teammates shared this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news sooner so you can hear the details directly from me.”
According to Jassy, Amazon plans to communicate with employees who will be affected by the latest round of layoffs starting January 18.
Jassy, who joined Amazon in 1997, was formerly CEO of the tech company’s fast-growing AWS cloud services division. Jassy took over the CEO job in July 2021, succeeding founder Jeff Bezos.