'Difficult Decision': Amazon Announces a New Round of Layoffs. Here Are the Roles Affected. Amazon's latest layoffs affect two specific departments.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is laying off dozens of workers in its communications and sustainability departments.
- Amazon more than doubled its workforce from 2019 to 2021, then announced layoffs affecting 27,000 people in 2022 and 2023.
Amazon is making dozens of job cuts in its communications and sustainability divisions, the e-commerce giant announced.
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told Bloomberg that the company was making changes to "move faster, increase ownership, strengthen our culture, and bring teams closer to customers."
"As part of these changes, we've made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles," Glasser wrote in an emailed statement. "We don't make these decisions lightly, and we're committed to supporting affected employees through their transitions."
Drew Herdener, Amazon's senior vice president of communications and corporate responsibility, said in an internal note to staff viewed by CNBC that the roles eliminated were too narrow in scope or added layers that weren't needed.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photo by Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon more than doubled its workforce, growing from 798,000 employees in the fourth quarter of 2019 to more than 1.6 million by 2021.
Then Amazon laid off 27,000 people in 2022 and 2023 across various divisions, including its cloud computing and advertising units.
After the sweeping job cuts, in the third quarter of 2024, Amazon had about 1.5 million full-time and part-time workers. The company let go of 200 employees on its North America stores team earlier this month.
Amazon announced a strict return-to-office (RTO) policy in September for its 350,000 corporate employees, mandating that they work in the office five days per week instead of working a hybrid schedule.
In November, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reassured employees that the RTO mandate was not "a backdoor layoff" but rather a way for Amazon to strengthen its culture.
Amazon's decision arrives a day after another big tech company saw workers banding together to ask company leaders for more job security. Over 1,300 Google employees signed a petition earlier this week requesting that CEO Sundar Pichai offer a guaranteed minimum severance package, buyouts before layoffs, and no performance review quotas.
Related: Over 1,300 Google Employees Have Signed a New Petition Asking For Job Security
Amazon layoffs aren't the first tech layoffs to happen this year. According to Layoffs.fyi, a layoffs tracker, 24 tech companies have already let go of 5,641 employees so far this year (in January).
Microsoft is reportedly about to start cutting positions soon, while Meta is laying off more than 3,000 employees by February 10.
