Amazon is streamlining its corporate workforce by eliminating approximately 14,000 positions. Affected employees began receiving notifications on Tuesday, with most given a 90-day window to seek internal opportunities within the company. Redundant workers will receive severance packages and support during their transition. While Amazon hasn’t specified which departments are impacted, previous reports indicate potential cuts across its cloud, retail, communications, and devices divisions.
This announcement follows similar moves in 2022 when Amazon already shed roughly 27,000 jobs. The company attributes these reductions to a broader effort to “reduce bureaucracy, remove layers,” and strategically allocate resources towards customer-centric priorities.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has previously signaled the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping future workforce configurations. He stated in June that AI tools would likely lead to further job displacement, particularly for tasks involving routine or repetitive processes. This sentiment aligns with a trend observed across major tech companies – a drive towards increased AI utilization and simultaneous cost-cutting measures elsewhere.
The New York Times reported this month on internal Amazon documents suggesting the company plans to automate over half a million jobs through robotics, further emphasizing the company’s focus on efficiency gains. During Amazon’s July earnings call, Jassy reiterated the importance of “automation and robotics” in enhancing operational cost-effectiveness and ultimately improving customer experiences.
The tech sector is experiencing significant workforce adjustments. Layoffs.fyi, a platform tracking job cuts in the industry, reveals that over 200 companies have announced more than 120,000 redundancies this year alone. This figure includes notable reductions at Microsoft (15,000) and Intel (22,000). While still lower than the nearly 153,000 tech industry job cuts recorded across over 500 companies in all of 2022, it underscores a continuing wave of change within the sector.
Amazon’s stock price edged up by 1.2% on Monday ahead of its anticipated third-quarter earnings report scheduled for Thursday.
