Amazon is set to reduce as many as 30,000 corporate positions beginning Tuesday, reflecting the company’s ongoing efforts to trim expenses and correct overhiring during the pandemic peak. The cuts would affect nearly 10% of Amazon’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees, though they represent a small fraction of the company’s total 1.55 million workforce.
The job reductions mark the largest corporate layoffs at Amazon since late 2022, when about 27,000 positions were eliminated. Divisions expected to be impacted include human resources (People Experience and Technology, or PXT), operations, devices and services, and Amazon Web Services. Managers of affected teams underwent training Monday on how to communicate the changes to staff, with email notifications beginning Tuesday morning.
CEO Andy Jassy has been spearheading efforts to streamline Amazon’s operations by reducing bureaucracy, cutting excess management, and integrating artificial intelligence to automate repetitive tasks. Analysts note that AI-driven productivity gains may be enabling the company to make a significant reduction in corporate staff, while offsetting the cost of long-term investments in AI infrastructure.
Additional factors contributing to the layoffs include a stringent return-to-office program that has failed to generate expected attrition, with some employees considered to have voluntarily quit due to commuting or other reasons. Earlier this year, Amazon reorganized a segment of its PXT unit focused on diversity initiatives, promoting employees to new roles as part of the changes.
Despite the corporate cuts, Amazon is preparing for another busy holiday season, planning to hire 250,000 seasonal workers for warehouses and other operations. The company’s cloud unit, AWS, continues to drive profits, though growth has slowed compared with rivals like Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud. Amazon shares rose 1.2% to $226.97 on Monday ahead of its third-quarter earnings report, scheduled for Thursday.
