The layoffs start Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Amazon plans to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs starting Tuesday morning, according to a new report from Reuters that cites three unnamed people familiar with the matter.
Amazon has 1.5 million employees globally (1.2 million in the U.S.), but about 350,000 of those are corporate positions, according to Reuters. Cutting 30,000 corporate jobs represents almost 9% of Amazon’s total corporate positions.
The Reuters report cited overhiring from the pandemic as the impetus of the cuts, but not everyone seems convinced by that argument, given the fact that companies have had plenty of time to tinker with their staffing since the onset of covid in 2020. The last massive job cuts at Amazon saw 27,000 people let go in late 2022.
Analysts on CNBC debated what was behind the news on Monday, with two other likely culprits: the rise of AI and President Donald Trump’s extreme tariffs. There was strong debate for and against the case that the reported job cuts were coming due to AI, but nobody seems to really know yet.
