Amazon is preparing for its second round of layoffs this year in the next few weeks. According to a note posted on the company’s blog CEO Andy Jassy said the cuts will mostly impact AWS, PXT (People Experience and Technology), advertising, and the Twitch streaming service.
In January the company announced an 18,000-person layoff, the largest in company history. These additional 9,000 layoffs will bring the total to 27,000 job cuts which are about eight percent of the corporate workforce.
“For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount,” Jassy wrote. “This made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole. However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”
Tech companies are continuing to downsize after the period of pandemic-driven growth. Amazon is expected to continue hiring in “strategic areas”, Jassy said. Amazon also told employees they were required to be in the office a minimum of three days a week. The company’s overall base head count is 1.5 million including warehouse workers, which aren’t part of the cut. The company has trimmed or eliminated some services such as Scout neighborhood delivery robots, Amazon Primary Care, and some brick-and-mortar stores.
Amazon also announced the closures of Amazon Go convenience stores and is pausing construction on its HQ2 project in Washington D.C.
