Amazon confirms plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers as part of wave of cuts
Amazon has confirmed plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers, as part of a wave of cuts expected to hit tens of thousands of jobs.The Seattle-based retail giant, which is vying to reverse a pandemic hiring spree, is attempting to cut costs and slim down its huge operation.This summer, its CEO warned white-collar employees their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence.Beth Galetti, a senior vice-president at Amazon, wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday: “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of … work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.”On Monday, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was poised to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, as it tries to undo the vast recruitment drive it embarked on at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, which unleashed an extraordinary – but fleeting – surge in demand for online shopping.
CNBC called it the largest layoff in the company’s history,The layoffs represent a small portion of Amazon’s sprawling global workforce of 1,55 million employees, but a significant chunk of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees,Amazon declined to comment on the reports of wider layoffs on Monday, before Galetti announced the 14,000 the following day,She also told employees that the firm would seek to identify “additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficiency gains” in 2026.
“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” wrote Galetti,“Across our businesses, we’re delivering great customer experiences every day, innovating at a rapid rate, and producing strong business results,What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly,“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),”Shares in Amazon, which is scheduled to report quarterly earnings later this week, rose 1.
2% on Monday after the initial reports of job cuts.Other giants of the internet have likewise backtracked on the major hiring undertaken during the coronavirus pandemic.Microsoft; Meta, parent of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook; and Alphabet, parent of Google and YouTube, have all laid off tens of thousands of workers in the past three years.Back in June, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, told employees that AI agents – tools that carry out tasks autonomously – and generative AI systems such as chatbots would require fewer employees in some areas.“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce,” Jassy wrote in a memo to staff.
In recent years, Amazon has been trimming smaller numbers of jobs across multiple divisions, including devices, communications, podcasting and others.This week’s wave of cuts is expected to affect a wide variety of divisions within Amazon, including human resources, known as people experience and technology, devices and services and operations, among others.Fortune reported that as many as 15% of the firm’s HR roles could be hit, citing multiple sources familiar with Amazon’s plans.Managers of affected teams were asked to undergo training on Monday for how to communicate with staff following notifications that will start going out via email tomorrow morning, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.Jassy has been undertaking an initiative to reduce what he has described as an excess of bureaucracy at the company, including by reducing the number of managers, and introduced an anonymous complaint line for claims of inefficiencies that has elicited about 1,500 responses and more than 450 process changes, he said earlier this year.
Reuters contributed reporting
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