New York: Amazon is slashing about 16,000 jobs in the second round of mass layoffs for the e-commerce 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 on Wednesday that the company has been “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy”.
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 “organisational changes” in October, others did not finish until now, Galetti said.
She said US-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 are Amazon’s biggest since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs.
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.
Hiring has stagnated in the US, and in December, the country added a meagre 50,000 jobs, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November.
Labour 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 labour situation in the US as a “no-hire-no-fire” environment, some companies have said they are cutting back on jobs, even this week.
