Amazon targets 30,000 corporate job cuts

Amazon was planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning yesterday, as the company pares expenses and compensates for over-hiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter.

- GREG BENSINGER

A smartphone shows Amazon's logo. Amazon is trying to reduce what its CEO has described as an excess of bureaucracy.

(REUTERS)

The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon's 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would mark Amazon's largest job cut since late 2022, when it started to eliminate around 27,000 positions.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. Amazon has been trimming smaller numbers of jobs over the past two years across multiple divisions, including devices, communications and podcasting. The cuts beginning this week may affect a variety of divisions, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology or PXT; operations, devices and services; and Amazon Web Services, the people said.

Managers of impacted teams were asked to undergo training on Monday for how to communicate with staff following email notifications that were to start going out yesterday morning, the people said.