Ok, let’s recap how we got here.

In late April of last year, while unveiling Q1 results, Amazon foreshadowed an overcapacity problem which, by the end of the second quarter, came to plague many of America’s largest retailers. CFO Brian Olsavsky suggested the company had too much warehouse space and more workers than it needed, after expanding rapidly in fulfillment to meet voracious demand in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The following quarter (so, while unveiling Q2 results), Andy Jassy said the company was “making progress on the more controllable costs we referenced last quarter.” He specifically mentioned improvements in fulfillment productivity. In remarks accompanying Q3 results, Jassy reiterated a version of the same line. “We’re encouraged by the steady progress we’re making on lowering costs in our fulfillment network,” he said, adding that Amazon was “methodically working” on cost structure initiatives. The company froze the majority of corporate hiring in 2022.

Then, in January, following what turned out to be a decent Q4, Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs (including cuts announced in November). Less than two months later (so, two weeks ago), Amazon confirmed it was pausing construction of a second headquarters in Virginia, where the company has promised to spend more than $2 billion and hire 25,000 workers over the next seven or so years. Amazon is still committed to the project, but the impact of any delays (i.e., the ripple effects for contractors and so on) are impossible to quantify — suffice to say delays would be economically meaningful.

On Monday, Amazon said it’s laying off another 9,000 people and, ominously, the cuts have spread to Jassy’s own AWS, where growth continued to decelerate last quarter.

The news comes just a week after Meta announced another round of layoffs. The chart above is updated with Amazon’s latest cuts, as well as Meta’s, but honestly, I can’t say for sure on the other companies listed. I’ve lost track. Out of 180,713 job cuts announced through February, nearly a third were in tech, according to Challenger figures.

I frankly don’t know enough about how AWS is structured and run to say anything especially insightful about what any job cuts there might mean — maybe, for example, the roles being eliminated somehow aren’t indicative of macro trends. What I can do, though, is state the obvious: The market is always sensitive to AWS news and particularly now, amid concerns that some key growth engines for mega-cap US tech companies are sputtering.

“For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount [which] made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole,” Jassy said Monday. “However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”

As for why Amazon didn’t include these job cuts in January’s announcement, Jassy essentially said the company wasn’t finished assessing headcount yet. “[N]ot all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall,” he wrote to employees.

“It’s never easy to say goodbye,” Jassy lamented, but ultimately, soon-to-be separated workers can be confident that their sacrifice wasn’t in vain, because “being leaner… enables [Amazon] to still invest robustly in the key long-term experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives.”

For anyone affected, consolation prizes include separation payments, transitional health benefits and external job placement support.

Oh! And unless something’s changed since late last month, laid off workers can still pledge their restricted stock units as collateral for cash that can then be used to make a downpayment on a home+.