Amazon has announced it will slash a further 9,000 jobs in the next few weeks with a primary focus on its Amazon Web Services team.

The retail giant previously laid off 18,000 employees in a cull which began last November.

In a letter to employees, Amazon chief executive Andrew Jassy said the latest round of terminations would mainly affect teams in Amazon Web Services, PXT, advertising, and Twitch.

Jassy echoed Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s reasoning for 10,000 additional job cuts, by saying that the layoffs were being made to make the company’s operations “leaner”.

Jassy said: “If I go back to our tenet—being leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole -- I believe the result of this year’s planning cycle is a plan that accomplishes this objective.”

The move continues a wave of job cuts across the tech sector, with Microsoft announcing plans to cut 11,000 roles in January.

Google’s parent company Alphabet also recently announced it would be cutting 12,000 roles.

At the time, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said: “We’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company”.

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