Amazon lays off 18,000 employees in the biggest job cut ever.
Amazon’s layoffs, the largest in company history, will begin today, Wednesday, January 18. There are 18,000 employees involved worldwide.
Amazon‘s layoffs, the largest in company history, will begin today, Wednesday, January 18. In a post on the company blog, Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, told employees that the redundancies will affect 18,000 people worldwide and that they were decided in an attempt to drastically reduce costs and revise the company’s priorities.
Amazon has already gone through several economic phases characterized by uncertainty and profound difficulties unscathed, and we will continue to do so in the future.
These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger corporate structure
he said. Employees affected by the redundancies will be contacted by the company starting today, 18 January.
The layoffs affect only a fraction of Amazon’s global workforce, now estimated at 1.5 million workers . The bulk of the redundancies concern the Amazon Stores division and therefore the teams that deal with e-commerce, but also the many Amazon physical stores.
Jassy announced in November that layoffs would be needed to deal with what risks being a new global recession. At the time, the CEO warned that Amazon would announce a new wave of layoffs at the beginning of 2023 . He kept his word: Amazon is thus preparing to face the largest personnel cut in its entire history.
