Andy Jassy says Amazon plans to lay off an additional 9,000 employees, mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch, after cutting 18,000 jobs in January
- Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon had signaled that reductions would extend into 2023, then expanded its initial target to more than 18,000 roles. This new round shifts the focus from the earlier retail and recruiting cuts toward AWS, people operations, advertising, and Twitch.
The retrenchment follows a markedly different staffing posture: Jassy had outlined plans to add more than 55,000 corporate employees in 2021. Later coverage groups these 2022–23 actions as 27,000 job cuts, making this a major step in Amazon's corporate-workforce reset.
First-order effects
- A further 9,000 employees face job losses, with the immediate impact concentrated in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch rather than the retail and recruiting teams emphasized in the January round.
- Amazon's affected organizations must operate with smaller teams after the January reduction was expanded beyond its original target.
Second-order effects
- The inclusion of AWS, advertising, and Twitch puts greater pressure on those businesses to prioritize work and consolidate overlapping functions, rather than treating the cuts as a retail-only adjustment.
- Employees with cloud, ad-tech, streaming, and HR experience become a larger potential talent pool for competitors, while Amazon's remaining teams absorb more of the affected groups' work.
Third-order effects
- Repeated, staged reductions indicate a shift from rapid corporate hiring toward tighter headcount control across both support functions and growth businesses.
- If this pattern persists, workforce planning at large tech platforms may become more iterative: hiring surges can be followed by multi-round corrections as leaders reassess business priorities.
The trend: Amazon's latest round is part of a broader reset from aggressive corporate expansion to more selective staffing across core technology and adjacent businesses.