The online retailer is again cutting 9,000 jobs.
(Photo: dpa)
san francisco The world’s largest online retailer Amazon starts the second wave of layoffs within a few months. CEO Andy Jassy announced in a blog post on Monday that 9,000 employees will lose their jobs. The cloud division AWS, the advertising department and the live streaming service Twitch are particularly affected.
Jassy said: “This was a difficult decision, but one that we believe is best for the company in the long term.” Jassy had already eliminated 18,000 jobs in the previous wave of layoffs. The Amazon boss announced that this round of layoffs should be completed by April. However, he left open whether further jobs could then be deleted.
The Amazon press office initially left an inquiry unanswered as to how severely the workforce in Germany will be affected by the layoffs.
The group did not announce all job cuts at the same time so as not to rush anything, the Amazon boss emphasized in his contribution. “We’ve chosen to share these decisions as soon as we make them, so people get the information as quickly as possible,” Jassy said.
When it comes to layoffs, Amazon is focusing primarily on the AWS division this time. The cloud business has recently been a key growth driver for Amazon. The online giant operates the largest cloud service in the world with AWS. Recently, however, the daughter’s business had clouded over.
Microsoft is growing faster in the cloud business
In the most recent quarter, AWS missed analyst expectations for both growth and total revenue. In the final quarter of 2022, AWS had grown by around 20 percent, in the third quarter growth was still 27.5 percent. Microsoft, the most important competitor, was able to increase its cloud division by 31 percent in the same period – significantly more than Amazon.
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“We are seeing some customers who are now tightening their belts,” said AWS boss Adam Selepski in an interview with US broadcaster CNBC. Customers have become more economical.
With the outbreak of the corona pandemic at the beginning of 2020, Amazon’s business had grown significantly. The global workforce has doubled in two years from 798,000 to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021. At the end of 2022, Amazon’s total workforce was still more than 1.5 million employees.
Part of the workforce works in the logistics division of the company. Employees often only stay there for a short time. Therefore, Amazon can reduce staff in this area without having to announce layoffs.
Just a few days before the latest round of layoffs, the boss of the Amazon streaming platform Twitch, Emmett Shear, announced his resignation. Most recently, Twitch had a dispute with well-known streamers about remuneration.
A few days ago, Facebook parent Meta also announced a second wave of layoffs, affecting around 10,000 employees. The Facebook group had already cut 11,000 jobs in November.
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