Amazon reportedly plans to cut up to 30,000 corporate jobs

Amazon is reportedly planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate roles starting this week, marking one of its largest rounds of layoffs since late 2022.

According to Reuters, the job cuts would represent nearly 10% of Amazon’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees and a small fraction of its total workforce of 1.55 million. The move is said to be part of efforts to streamline operations and offset overhiring during the pandemic, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The layoffs are expected to affect several divisions, including human resources, known internally as People Experience and Technology (PXT), as well as operations, devices and services, and Amazon Web Services.

Managers of impacted teams reportedly underwent training on Monday to prepare for staff notifications set to go out beginning Tuesday morning.

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Reuters noted that CEO Andy Jassy has been working to reduce what he described as an “excess of bureaucracy”, including by cutting layers of management.

Earlier this year, he reportedly said the company’s increasing use of artificial intelligence tools could lead to further job reductions, particularly through the automation of routine and repetitive tasks.

The full scope of the job cuts remains unclear and could change over time as Amazon’s financial priorities shift. Fortune earlier reported that the company’s HR division could face cuts of up to 15%.

In February, Amazon began enforcing a stricter return-to-office policy requiring employees to be in the office five days a week, among the most stringent in the tech industry. However, the policy reportedly failed to drive enough attrition, with some remote workers told they had “voluntarily quit” the company and would not be eligible for severance.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Amazon for more information. 

This latest move follows several rounds of workforce reductions over the past two years. In January 2023, Amazon cut over 18,000 roles, mainly affecting its eCommerce and human resources teams, as part of a wider effort to address post-pandemic overhiring. Three months later, the company announced another 9,000 job cuts across divisions such as AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch. Business Times reported that it also trimmed smaller number of jobs across devices, communications and podcasting. 

In October 2023, Amazon confirmed it would sunset its ad-serving business by the fourth quarter of 2024 to streamline operations and support affected employees. A month later, it made further cuts within its gaming division, impacting around 180 roles as it refocused resources on higher-growth areas such as Prime Gaming. 

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