Amazon said on Wednesday it was cutting 16,000 jobs worldwide in the second major round of layoffs at the company in three months, as it restructures after pandemic-era over-hiring and expands the adoption of artificial intelligence tools.
Amazon was planning a second round of job cuts as part of a broader goal of trimming about 30,000 corporate roles, with the layoffs expected to affect workers in Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video and human resources departments, according to a Reuters report last week.
Amazon slashed 14,000 white-collar jobs in late October, with CEO Andy Jassy stressing the need for the company to eliminate excessive bureaucracy by trimming operational levels and reducing the number of managers.
“Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months. That’s not our plan,” said Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon.
The job cuts also underscore how artificial intelligence is changing corporate workforce dynamics. Significant improvements in AI assistants are helping enterprises execute duties from routine administrative tasks to complex coding problems with rapid speed and precision, driving widespread adoption.
Jassy had said last summer that the increased use of AI tools would lead to more automation of duties, resulting in corporate job losses.
Earlier this month, top executives at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting said that while jobs would disappear, new ones would spring up, with two of them telling Reuters that AI would be used as an excuse by companies planning to cut jobs anyway.
The 30,000 jobs would together represent a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10% of its corporate workforce. The majority of Amazon’s workers are in fulfilment centres and warehouses.
Tech giants, including Amazon, Facebook-parent Meta Platforms and Microsoft, had sharply ramped up hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic demand surge and have lately been restructuring their workforce.
Amazon has also been investing in robotics at its warehouses to speed up packaging and deliveries for its e-commerce segment, reduce the reliance on human labor and cutting costs.
The company is set to report quarterly results next week.
