Amazon plans to cut 18,000 roles as part of a workforce reduction. Chief Executive Andy Jassy announced this in a public staff note on Wednesday The New York Times reported.
The layoff decisions, which Amazon will communicate starting Jan. 18, will mostly impact the company’s e-commerce and human resources organizations. The amount of layoffs affects about 6% of Amazon’s roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce.
The Amazon’s layoffs have now passed the 11,000 cuts announced last year by Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
The company stock fell more than 1% on Thursday and is half the price it was a year ago.
Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers including warehouse staff, making it America’s second-largest private employer right after Walmart Inc. Jassy also indicated its cuts extend to Europe.
Jassy says in the note that annual planning “has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years”.
For months the company has braced for slower growth as inflation grows throughout the nation encouraged businesses and consumers to cut back spending. United States retailers saw a smaller rise in online sales this holiday season, with a recent measure of consumer prices up about 7% from a year earlier.
Amazon started letting staff go in November from its devices division, with a source telling Reuters at the time it was targeting around 10,000 cuts.
