Gloomy prospects at Amazon: the mail order company is cutting more than 18,000 jobs.

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In November, Amazon announced that it would cut 10,000 jobs. The US company is now saying: 8,000 more jobs are to fall victim to the austerity measures. This is the first significant downsizing since the company was founded in 1994.

CEO Andy Sassy

The wave of layoffs at the world's largest online mail-order company Amazon is significantly larger than initially assumed. CEO Andy Jassy announced Wednesday evening in a memo to employees that more than 18,000 jobs would be cut. In November, there was talk of only 10,000 jobs. This is the first significant downsizing in the US group's history, founded in 1994. Amazon recently had around 1.5 million employees worldwide, most working in the delivery and warehousing infrastructure.

"Amazon has endured uncertain and uncertain economic situations in the past and will continue to do so," explained CEO Jassy in the company blog with a view to the challenging economic environment given high inflation and rising key interest rates. The leadership team is aware of how difficult the layoffs are for those affected and do not take such decisions lightly. But the step is necessary to reduce costs. Amazon had already started cutting jobs on a large scale in November. In addition, there was a hiring offensive in previous years due to the online order boom during the pandemic.

The layoffs initially affected the loss-making device division for Echo smart speakers and the Alexa language assistant program. But Jassy had already prepared the employees for further job cuts in mid-November and signaled that there would also be layoffs in the coming year.

The job cuts should now be even more far-reaching and include additional divisions. According to Jassy, management initially wanted to communicate this more confidentially to those affected. But this was not possible because the plans had been leaked. The US financial newspaper “Wall Street Journal” had previously reported on this, citing insiders.

The job cuts at Amazon are further evidence of the abrupt end of the job boom in the tech industry. After business flourished during the pandemic, the current market environment, characterized by fears of inflation and recession, is giving many companies a hard time. The line of companies announcing layoffs has been growing for months. For example, there were accurate job cuts at the Facebook and Instagram mother Meta and the online network Twitter, which Tesla boss Elon Musk took over.

On Wednesday morning, the US software manufacturer Salesforce had already announced that it wanted to eliminate every tenth employee. According to its own statements in December, the SAP rival had more than 79,000 employees worldwide. Therefore, almost 8,000 jobs are likely to be lost the sales software specialist. Salesforce only disappointed investors with its outlook for the final quarter at the end of November. In addition, the group had announced that co-CEO Bret Taylor was leaving his post.