Amazon said it would lay off another 9,000 employees, joining a wave of layoffs sweeping the technology sector, Reuters reported.
The latest cuts are focused on Amazon’s highly profitable cloud services and advertising divisions, which were once considered untouchable until economic woes forced business customers to check their spending.
The layoffs will also affect Amazon’s Twitch streaming unit. Dan Clancy, who was named Twitch’s CEO last week, said the platform will lay off more than 400 employees.
In a note to staff that Amazon posted online, its CEO Andy Jassy said the decision stemmed from an ongoing analysis of priorities and uncertainty about the economy.
“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago,” he wrote. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall”,
said Andy Jassy.
Last month, Amazon said operating profit may continue to decline in the current quarter, hit by the financial impact of consumers and cloud customers reining in spending.
“None of these cuts should be happening. Jaci decided to do them to boost Amazon’s profit.
The Athens Coalition, a group of workers and activists that has criticized Amazon for its decisions, said in a statement.
In recent months, the company has cut or shut down entire services, such as virtual primary care for employers.