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Amazon will cut about 16,000 corporate jobs in a three-month period of mass layoffs, the second in a wave of e-commerce companies.
The tech giant said it plans to use generative artificial intelligence to replace corporate employees. It’s also cutting back on its workforce, which has surged during the pandemic.
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president, said in a blog post shared with CBC News on Wednesday that the company is “reducing layers, increasing ownership and eliminating bureaucracy.”
The company did not say which business units would be affected or where job cuts would occur. The company also did not say how many employees in Canada would be affected by the layoffs.
The cuts follow a round of layoffs in October, when Amazon announced it would lay off 14,000 employees. Galetti said some Amazon divisions completed these “reorganizations” in October, but others have not until now.
He said U.S.-based staff will have 90 days to find new roles within the company. Those who are unsuccessful or do not want a new job will be provided with severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits, she said.
“As we move forward with these changes, we will also continue to hire and invest in strategic areas and functions that are important to our future,” Galetti said.
On Tuesday, Amazon accidentally sent an email to some Amazon Web Services staff that appeared to refer to its layoffs plan as “Project Dawn,” upsetting thousands of employees.
The email, signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, incorrectly stated that affected employees in the U.S., Canada, and Costa Rica had already been notified that they had lost their jobs.
“Changes like this are tough on everyone,” Aubrey wrote in an email seen by Reuters. “These decisions are difficult, but they are being made thoughtfully to position our organization and AWS for future success.”
Amazon announced 14,000 corporate layoffs while touting the benefits of artificial intelligence as the most revolutionary technology since the internet. The retail giant is the latest company to cut positions while investing heavily in AI.
Amazon on Tuesday cut jobs in its fresh produce and Go Market divisions as it plans to close existing brick-and-mortar stores and convert some stores to Whole Foods stores. The number of employees affected was not disclosed.
The scale of the job cuts announced Wednesday remains unclear. The overall 30,000 jobs reported in October represent a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s total workforce.
In an October blog post, Amazon tied these job cuts to increased use of artificial intelligence. The post, from Human Resources Director Beth Galetti, suggested further layoffs were likely in the future.