Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the business had completed the second phase of its operating this past week, and that the job losses will mostly be from the Amazon Web Sevices cloud platform, people, experience and technology department, advertising, and Twitch sectors of the business.
Jassy said that Amazon had to reprioritise, which: "initially led us to eliminate 18,000 positions (which we shared in January); and, as we completed the second phase of our planning this month, it led us to these additional 9,000 role reductions (though you will see limited hiring in some of our businesses in strategic areas where we’ve prioritised allocating more resources),” said Jassy.
Jassy addressed why the 9,000 new redundancies had not been announced with the 18,000 in January and admitted that not all his teams at Amazon were done with their analyses in the late fall and that “due diligence” had to be followed.
In January, the global etailer announced that it would shed 18,000 jobs and that the job cuts would mostly impact the company’s bricks-and-mortar stores, including Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and its people, experience and technology divisions.
In February 2023 Amazon reported a 22.9% fall in operating income year on year to $2.7bn(£2.2bn) in the three months to 31 December, despite better-than-expected sales.
Net sales for the company were $142.2bn (£116bn) in the quarter, up 9% from 2021. Sales in North America were up 13% year-over-year to $93.4bn (£76.2bn) while international segment sales fell 8% year on year to $34.5bn (£28.1bn).
