New episode of massive layoffs in the technology sector. Amazon will cut 9,000 additional jobs, its CEO, Andy Jassy, announced on Monday March 20 in a letter to the group’s teams, published on its site. A new salvo which comes on top of the 18,000 job cuts already announced in January.
Most of these new job cuts concern the remote computing activity (cloud) Amazon Web Services (AWS), the PXT department devoted to human resources management, the staff dedicated to advertising, as well as the -form Twitch video, Mr. Jassy clarified. The layoffs announced since early January represent about 1.7% of the workforce at Amazon, which had 1.54 million employees worldwide at the end of 2022.
Andy Jassy justified this second wave of job cuts by the fact that the analyzes carried out in certain departments had taken longer than for others, but it is part of the same savings initiative initiated in the fall. “Given the economic uncertainty and the lack of visibility on the near future, we have decided to reduce our costs and our workforce”explained the chief executive, who took over from founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021.
Post-lockdown slowdown
The Seattle giant (western United States) recorded a 98% drop in net profit in the fourth quarter of 2022, which came out far below what analysts expected. “For many years”before 2023, “Most of our activities have increased their workforce significantly”what “made sense (at the time) given the evolution of our business and the economy”, recalled Mr. Jassy on Monday.
Between the end of 2019 and the end of 2022, Amazon recruited, net, 700,000 people, and thus increased the number of its employees by 83%. The end of the confinements and the gradual return to the office slowed down the trajectory of the group, which had experienced insolent growth with the Covid-19 pandemic and the acceleration of online commerce.
Added to this was the US central bank’s (Fed) monetary tightening cycle, which began in the spring of 2022, which caused interest rates to rise sharply, to which the technology sector is particularly sensitive due to the significant financing needs. .
Since 2022 and the end of confinements, 1,150 tech companies have cut more than 190,000 jobs. On January 20, Google in turn announced the loss of 12,000 jobs.