Amazon cuts about 16,000 corporate jobs in the latest round of layoffs

People walk out of an Amazon Go store in Seattle, March 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Editor’s note: In a statement, an Amazon Canada spokesperson told CTV News that “the number provided is a global number of impacted corporate employees, however, I am not able to share specifics per country.”

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Amazon is slashing about 16,000 corporate jobs in the second round of mass layoffs for the ecommerce company in three months.

The tech giant has said it plans to use generative artificial intelligence to replace corporate workers. It has also been reducing a workforce that swelled during the pandemic.

Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, said in a blog post Wednesday that the company has been “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.”

The company did not say what business units would be impacted, or where the job cuts would occur.

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The latest reductions follow a round of job cuts in October, when Amazon said it was laying off 14,000 workers. While some Amazon units completed those “organizational changes” in October, others did not finish until now, Galetti said.

She said U.S.-based staff would be given 90 days to look for a new role internally. Those who are unsuccessful or don’t want a new job will be offered severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits, she said.

“While we’re making these changes, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,” Galetti said.

CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively cut costs since succeeding founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, said in June that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the next few years.

The layoffs announced Wednesday are Amazon’s biggest since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, Amazon and other Big Tech and retail companies have cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line following the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon’s workforce doubled as millions stayed home and boosted online spending.

California’s workforce agency said Wednesday it hasn’t yet received a warning notice from Amazon, which would be required if the company is making large-scale layoffs there. State employment agencies in Washington, where Seattle-based Amazon is headquartered, and Virginia, where it has a major office, didn’t immediately report any warning notices in their states.

Several economic studies have predicted that higher-paying jobs in computer work and engineering are among the most susceptible to being transformed by generative AI systems that can help write code.

But research last week by the Brookings Institution also showed that workers in those technology roles also are more likely to have the education, skills and savings that enable them to more easily transfer into another job. The same study shows there are also millions of workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt.

Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers.

Hiring has stagnated in the U.S. and in December. The country added a meager 50,000 jobs, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November.

Labor data points to a reluctance by businesses to add workers even as economic growth has picked up. Many companies hired aggressively after the pandemic and no longer need to fill more jobs. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, elevated inflation, and the spread of artificial intelligence, which could alter or even replace some jobs.

While economists have described the labor situation in the U.S as a “no hire-no fire” environment, some companies have said they are cutting back on jobs, even this week.

On Tuesday, UPS said it planned to cut up to 30,000 operational jobs through attrition and buyouts this year as the package delivery company reduces the number of shipments from what was its largest customer, Amazon.

That followed 34,000 job cuts in October at UPS and the closing of daily operations at 93 leased and owned buildings during the first nine months of last year.

Also on Tuesday, Pinterest said it plans to lay off under 15 per cent of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring that arrives as the image-sharing platform invests more in artificial intelligence.

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The job cuts at Amazon have not arrived with a company on shaky financial ground.

In its most recent quarter, Amazon’s profit jumped nearly 40 per cent to about US$21 billion and revenue soared to more than US$180 billion.

Late last year after layoffs, Jassy said job cuts weren’t driven by company finances or AI.

“It’s culture,” he said in October. “And if you grow as fast as we did for several years, the size of businesses, the number of people, the number of locations, the types of businesses you’re in, you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers.”

Shares of Amazon Inc., based in Seattle, fell US$2.47, or a little more than one per cent in late afternoon trading.

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Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

Matt O’Brien and Anne D’Innocenzio contributed to this article.