Amazon is reportedly planning to cut up to 30,000 jobs this week, according to sources speaking to Reuters. If this goes ahead, it will be the largest mass layoff in the company’s 31-year history.
As reported by Reuters, multiple sources claim that Amazon will lay off thousands of corporate jobs beginning from this Tuesday. The move is apparently the result of the online retail giant cutting expenses after overhiring during the COVID-19 pandemic, having brought on 427,300 new employees between January and October 2020.
Amazon employs approximately 1.5 million workers worldwide, and is one of the U.S.’ largest employers. This week’s mass layoffs will be its largest since the company cut 27,000 corporate jobs between November 2022 to March 2023.
It’s currently unclear exactly which corporate Amazon employees might be impacted. Earlier this month, Fortune reported that Amazon plans to cut up to 15 percent of its employees in human resources, which has over 10,000 employees across the globe.
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Mashable has reached out to Amazon for comment.
Though this round of Amazon layoffs is focused on its corporate employees, the company’s warehouse workers have also faced challenges in recent months. Amazon reportedly fired over 150 unionised drivers in New York last month, which the union claimed was retaliation for the workers’ participation in December’s strikes. Despite the National Labor Relations Board’s finding that Amazon is a joint employer with its subcontractors, the company maintains that the drivers managed by its subcontractors aren’t its employees. Amazon has also refused to recognise their union.
The New York Times reported last week that Amazon hopes to eventually replace over half a million jobs with robots, with the goal of automating 75 percent of its operations. This would include creating warehouses which employ only a small number of humans.
In response, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel stated that the internal documents sighted by the Times “reflect the perspective of just one team and don’t represent our overall hiring strategy across our various operations business lines.”
Nantel further noted that Amazon is looking to hire 250,000 seasonal workers for the holiday season. Of course, the nature of seasonal work means that these jobs will likely be temporary.
