Wave of layoffs: Amazon cuts more than 18,000 jobs

Dhe job cuts at the Internet company Amazon are larger than initially planned: CEO Andy Jassy announced on Wednesday evening on the company website that “a little more than 18,000” jobs would be cut. This also affected Europe. In November, Amazon laid off around 10,000 announced to employees.

The job cuts are the largest in the company’s history. Amazon had significantly increased its number of employees in the wake of the corona pandemic, when online trade soared. In the first quarter of 2022, 1.62 million people worked for the company. Since then, the number of employees has fallen again, at the end of September it was 1.54 million employees worldwide. This does not include seasonal workers who work at Amazon around the holiday season.

In the third quarter of 2022, net income fell by nine percent compared to the same period last year. For the fourth quarter, Amazon expects what is by its standards weak growth of between 2 and 8 percent year-on-year and an operating profit of between 0 and 4 billion dollars compared to 3.5 billion in the same period last year. The group plans to present its annual balance sheet on February 1st.

Online trading platforms in the US are suffering from cutbacks by advertisers in response to inflation and rising interest rates.

Recently, a number of technology companies had announced or implemented extensive job cuts. The Facebook parent company Meta announced in November that it would cut 11,000 jobs, around 13 percent of its workforce. In late August, Snapchat laid off about 20 percent of its employees, more than 1,200 employees. The new Twitter boss Elon Musk laid off about half of his 7,500 employees in October.