Amazon has told workers it is cutting 16,000 jobs around the world to streamline its operations, hours after sending out a message to staff about the layoffs apparently in error.
It is the second big wave of job cuts at the US online retail company, and comes just three months after the company said it was slashing 14,000 roles. Amazon employs about 1.5 million workers worldwide.
Most job cuts are expected to be in the US, although some roles in the UK may also be affected.
The company said the “additional organisational changes” were designed to “strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy”, according to a blogpost to staff from Beth Galetti, the senior vice-president of people experience and technology.
Galetti said some teams had not been affected by the job cuts announced in October, but this was not the beginning of regular waves of layoffs. “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,” she wrote.
US-based employees who are affected will be offered 90 days to find a new role internally, with the timing for applying for new roles varying in other countries.
Galetti said Amazon would continue to hire new staff and invest in “strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future”.
The official announcement came just hours after workers at Amazon Web Services (AWS) received an online meeting invitation from a top executive on Tuesday for the following day – subsequently cancelled – that also contained a draft email revealing the cuts.
The message erroneously said that affected employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica had already been told they had lost their jobs.
It was signed by Colleen Aubrey, a senior vice-president of applied AI solutions at AWS, while the layoffs were referred to in the email as “Project Dawn”.
“Changes like this are hard on everyone,” Aubrey wrote in the email, which was seen by multiple news outlets including Reuters and Bloomberg. “These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organisation and AWS for future success.”
The email referred to a separate message from Amazon’s human resources boss, which did not appear to have been sent.
Amazon has been trying to reverse a pandemic hiring spree in an effort to cut costs and slim down its vast operation
Amazon’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, has previously warned white-collar workers at the company that their jobs could be taken by AI in the next few years.
The news of fresh Amazon layoffs came as the US delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS) said it would cut up to 30,000 jobs this year, adding to last year’s staff reductions, as it focuses on higher-margin shipments.
UPS has been working to cut millions of low-value deliveries it carries out for Amazon, which is its largest customer but increasingly also a delivery rival. UPS has called its business with Amazon “extraordinarily dilutive” to margins.
It is understood that a few hundred of the job cuts are expected to be in UK corporate offices in London and Manchester, with warehouses unaffected.
Additional reporting by Sarah Butler
