Amazon is set to lay off tens of thousands of its corporate employees this week, marking the company’s biggest staffing reduction since roughly 27,000 staffers were eliminated at the end of 2022.
As first reported by Reuters, the Andy Jassy-led ecommerce giant will cut as many as 30,000 workers — nearly 10% of its corporate workforce — beginning as early as Tuesday. The layoffs come just before Amazon reports its latest quarterly earnings results on Thursday and are, according to Reuters’ sources, part of efforts to “pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic.”
While Amazon’s total workforce amounts to 1.55 million employees, the corporate count is approximately 350,000.
Representatives for Amazon did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment Monday.
Back in June, Amazon CEO Jassy sent a memo to staff that outlined how generative AI would soon “make our jobs even more exciting and fun than they are today” but also cut the overall number of jobs at the company.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” the CEO said. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
More to come…
