After laying off more than 18,000 employees among its corporate ranks earlier this month, Amazon is going to start a fresh round of job cuts that will affect the retail division and human resources of the company, reported Bloomberg.
According to the report, the latest round of layoffs is set to begin on Wednesday. The e-commerce giant is grappling with slowing online sales growth and bracing for a possible recession which in turn has led to a new round of deep job cuts.
Amazon in January announced that it was laying off more than 18,000 employees in its corporate ranks. It was the largest job cut in its history.
The eliminations started last year and initially fell hardest on Amazon’s Devices and Services group, which builds the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart speakers.
Even though the job cuts only account for 1 per cent of the entire workforce, which also includes tens of thousands of hourly warehouse and delivery workers, they affect about 6 per cent of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate workers worldwide.
Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said earlier this month, “Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so. These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.”
Jassy had also said the company would provide severance, transitional health benefits, and job placement to affected workers.
In November last year, Amazon had announced 10,000 layoffs, eliminating a number of positions across its Devices and Books businesses, and a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in the People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization.
Also Read: Amazon Announces Over 18,000 Job Cuts, Cites ‘Uncertain Economy’
“I also shared that we weren’t done with our annual planning process and that I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023,” CEO Andy Jassy had said last year.
Several significant IT firms, including Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., Qualcomm Inc., and Salesforce Inc., are also reducing their workforces.