Amazon Takes $640 Million Hit For Layoffs

Amazon reported it took a $640 million hit during the quarter as part of its massive 18,000 employee layoffs announced last month. Executives reiterated that AWS employees weren’t significantly affected by the terminations.

“As we consider the ongoing uncertainties of the macroeconomic environment, this led us to the difficult decision to eliminate just over 18,000 roles, primarily impacting our stores and device businesses as well as our human resources teams,” said Olsavsky. “As a result, we recorded an estimated severance cost of $640 million.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said it was the “hardest decision” to terminate 18,000 employees.

“Those [layoffs] were all done with an eye toward trying to streamline our cost but still be able to invest in the things that we think really matter over the long term,” said Jassy.