What Amazon layoffs mean for Seattle

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced in a post published Wednesday that the tech giant will eliminate over 18,000 roles.

The total number of layoffs includes those announced in Nov. 2022, with a second wave expected to start in mid-January, Jassy said. 

He said Amazon typically waits to announce the layoffs to the public after speaking with the people impacted, but an employee leaked the information before the company could reach out to the affected employees. 

Jassy said several teams are impacted, but the majority of role eliminations will be in Amazon Stores and PXT organizations.

"This is a huge deal for Amazon, they haven't had layoffs this size ever, and if you just think of when they last had big layoffs, [they were a] smaller company, during the Great Recession," said Spencer Soper, a technology reporter for Bloomberg who has covered Amazon for a decade. 

"They're up to 1.5 million employees now around the globe, so that makes the 18,000 sound fairly small, but this is one of those tipping point things," Soper said. "When you have a company that's growing, growing, adding facilities, adding people like crazy, to all of a sudden- tap the brakes, not building as much new stuff, having too much capacity, having too many people... that was their overall acknowledgment."

The online retail giant, like other tech and social media giants, saw sizable profits during the COVID-19 pandemic, as homebound shoppers purchased more items online. But revenue growth slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased and consumers relied less on e-commerce.

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