Headline is confusing. It makes it sound like there will be 18k new layoffs, but this is information that has been public since November and the cuts happened two days ago. (Or at least the bulk of them did)
This article was late to the game therefore headline is garbage. Amazon laid off 18k ppl in the most clusterfuck way. They had an article leaked about the wave 1 in November that impacted some 8k to 11k and then this weds the total was brought up to 18k. The emails from the article were sent to Amazon employees on weds the 18th after Amazon employees spent all of the holidays and January stressed wondering "am I going to be laid off?"
No new layoffs, but the 18k is the collective total and it's being spread out so long because of Amazon leadership incompetence and world wide labor laws differing.