Biggest reduction since 2023, months after announcing the dismissal of 14 thousand employees and replacement of 600 thousand with “cobots”.
Amazon will cut about 16,000 jobs in the latest round of mass layoffs in the technology industry, the largest reduction at the company since 2023.
Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at the e-commerce company, announced the job cuts this Wednesday in a blog post.
But hours earlier, the tech giant informed employees of the round of layoffs via email, apparently sent by mistake and quickly erased, advances.
The email referred to staff cuts in United States, Canada and Costa Rica. But officially Amazon has not confirmed which countries will be affected.
“This is a continuation of the work we have been doing for over a year to strengthen the company by reducing hierarchy, increasing accountability and eliminating bureaucracy so that we can act faster for our customers,” the email allegedly read.
The latest reductions follow a round of job cuts in October, when Amazon laid off 14,000 workers.
Galetti said that employees based in the U.S. would have 90 days to look for a new role internally. Those who are unsuccessful or do not want a new job will receive compensation, outplacement services and health insurance benefits, he said.
“As we make these changes, we will also continue to hire and invest in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,” said Galetti.
The reduction in the number of jobs is the largest at Amazon since 2023, when the company laid off people 27,000 employees.
Amazon’s workforce doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic as millions stayed home and increased online spending. But in the years since, major technology and retail companies have cut thousands of jobs to align spending.
A hiring stagnated in the US and in December, the country added just 50,000 jobs, almost unchanged from the downwardly revised number of 56,000 in November.
Labor data indicate a reluctance on the part of companies to add workerseven with economic growth accelerating.
Many companies hired aggressively after the pandemic and no longer need to fill vacancies. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caused by volatile tariff policies Donald Trumphigh inflation and the spread of Artificial Intelligence, which can change or even replace some jobs.
According to internal Amazon documents obtained in October last year by The New York Times, Jeff Bezos’ company believes it can avoid hiring more than 600,000 people by 2033, automating 75% of its operations with what it calls “”.
