Amazon Plans to Lay Off Another 9,000 Employees, AI to Fill Their Roles

Amazon is set to lay off another 9,000 employees in the coming weeks, as announced by CEO Andy Jassy in a letter to employees. This marks the second wave of extensive job cuts within the company. From November 2022 to January 2023, Amazon already eliminated around 18,000 positions.

The majority of the employees affected worked in recruitment and HR departments. There are reports that the company intends to replace some of these roles with artificial intelligence, which could determine which candidates have the most potential for specific positions and select them for the next interview stage without the oversight of human specialists.

According to cnbc.com, this latest wave of layoffs will impact workers in the cloud services and Twitch divisions, as well as in advertising and again, HR departments. Jassy indicated that while the company had significantly increased its workforce over the past few years, the current economic instability necessitates cuts to expenses and jobs. As Jassy mentioned, the business now needs to become "more compact" and only invest in long-term core projects.

In 2019, Amazon employed 798,000 people, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company aggressively hired new employees, causing its workforce to balloon to 1.6 million. However, following the pandemic, the company was forced to implement massive layoffs.

Amazon has also frozen hiring processes, cut back on certain experimental projects, and slowed its warehouse expansion.