FILE – The Amazon logo is displayed at a news conference in New York on Sept. 28, 2011.
Mark Lennihan/AP
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 stated it plans to apply generative artificial ininformigence to replace corporate workers. It has also been reducing a workforce that swelled during the pandemic.
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Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, stated in a blog post Wednesday that the company has been “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and rerelocating bureaucracy.”
The company did not declare what business units would be impacted, or where the job cuts would occur.
The latest reductions follow a round of job cuts in October, when Amazon stated it was laying off 14,000 workers. While some Amazon units completed those “organizational alters” in October, others did not finish until now, Galetti stated.
She stated U.S.-based staff would be given 90 days to see 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 stated.
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“While we’re creating these alters, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,” Galetti stated.
CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively cut costs since succeeding founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, stated 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 largegest since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs.
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Meanwhile, Amazon and other Big Tech and retail companies have cut thousands of jobs to bring spfinishing back in line following the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon’s workforce doubled as millions stayed home and boosted online spfinishing.
California’s workforce agency stated Wednesday it hasn’t yet received a warning notice from Amazon, which would be required if the company is creating 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 assist write code.
But research last week by the Brookings Institution also revealed 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 reveals there are also millions of workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt.
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Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in tinyer 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 countest added a meager 50,000 jobs, nearly unalterd 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 necessary to fill more jobs. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caapplyd by President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, elevated inflation, and the spread of artificial ininformigence, 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 stated they are cutting back on jobs, even this week.
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On Tuesday, UPS stated it planned to cut up to 30,000 operational jobs through attrition and purchaseouts 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 stated it plans to lay off under 15% of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring that arrives as the image-sharing platform invests more in artificial ininformigence.
The job cuts at Amazon have not arrived with a company on shaky financial ground.
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In its most recent quarter, Amazon’s profit jumped nearly 40% to about $21 billion and revenue soared to more than $180 billion.
Late last year after layoffs, Jassy stated job cuts weren’t driven by company finances or AI.
“It’s culture,” he stated in October. “And if you grow as rapid 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 finish up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you finish up with a lot more layers.”
Shares of Amazon Inc., based in Seattle, fell $2.47, or a little more than 1% in late afternoon trading.
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Matt O’Brien and Anne D’Innocenzio contributed to this article.
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