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Andy Jassy: Amazon CEO
Photo: Mike Blake / REUTERS
The job cuts at the online mail order company Amazon are significantly larger than previously known.
CEO Andy Jassy announced on Wednesday evening (local time) in a memo to employees that more than 18,000 jobs would be cut.
There was talk of around 10,000 jobs in November, but further cuts had already been announced at the time.
The job cuts are the largest in the company's history.
Amazon had significantly increased its number of employees in the wake of the corona pandemic, when online trading soared.
In the first quarter of 2022, 1.62 million people worked for the company.
Since then, the number of employees has fallen again, at the end of September it was 1.54 million employees worldwide.
This does not include seasonal workers who work at Amazon around the holiday season.
In the third quarter of 2022, net income fell by nine percent compared to the same period last year.
For the fourth quarter, Amazon expects what is by its standards weak growth of between 2 and 8 percent year-on-year and operating profit of between 0 and 4 billion dollars compared to 3.5 billion in the same period last year.
The group plans to present its annual balance sheet on February 1st.
Rising inflation and the looming recession are affecting the entire tech industry.
Recently, a number of technology companies had announced or implemented extensive job cuts.
The software company Salesforce, for example, has just announced that it will cut ten percent of its jobs.
bbr/dpa/Reuters/AFP
