Amazon is planning a second round of corporate job cuts next week as part of a broader effort to eliminate roughly 30,000 white-collar roles, according to two people familiar with the matter, reports Reuters.
The company cut about 14,000 corporate positions in October, roughly half of the total reduction first reported by Reuters. The next round is expected to be similar in size and could begin as early as Tuesday, the sources said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the company’s plans.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.
The layoffs are expected to affect teams across Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and the human resources unit known as People Experience and Technology, though the full scope remains unclear. The sources cautioned that details could still change.
Amazon previously linked the October job cuts to advances in artificial intelligence, saying in an internal memo that “this generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet.”
However, Chief Executive Andy Jassy later told analysts the reductions were “not really financially driven and it’s not even really AI-driven,” describing the root cause as cultural. He said the company had accumulated too many layers of management and bureaucracy.
Jassy has said Amazon’s corporate workforce would shrink over time as efficiencies from AI take hold. Like many large companies, Amazon is increasingly using AI to write software code and automate routine tasks, and it showcased new AI models at its annual AWS conference in December.
If completed, the 30,000 job cuts would represent a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees worldwide, most of whom work in fulfillment centers and warehouses. However, the reductions would amount to nearly 10% of the company’s corporate workforce.
The cuts would be the largest in Amazon’s three-decade history, surpassing the roughly 27,000 jobs eliminated in 2022.
Employees affected in October were placed on a 90-day paid transition period during which they could apply for internal roles or seek other employment. That period expires on Monday.
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
