Amazon layoffs will affect 30,000 company employees (report)

Amazon is set to lay off tens of thousands of company employees this week, marking the company’s largest workforce reduction since it eliminated about 27,000 employees in late 2022.

As first reported by ReutersThe Andy Jassy-led e-commerce giant will lay off as many as 30,000 employees — nearly 10% of the company’s workforce — starting Tuesday. The layoffs come just before Amazon reports its latest quarterly earnings results on Thursday and, according to Reuters’ sources, are part of efforts to “cut costs and compensate for overstaffing during the pandemic’s peak demand.”

At the end of March, Amazon reported 1.56 million employees, a 3% increase from a year earlier. According to Reuters, the number of company employees is approximately 350,000.

Amazon representatives did not immediately respond Variety‘s request for comment Monday.

In June, Amazon CEO Jassy sent a memo to staff outlining how generative AI would soon “make our jobs even more exciting and fun than they are today,” but also cut the overall number of jobs at the company.

“As we roll out more generative AI and agents, this should change the way our work is done,” the CEO said. “We will need fewer people for some of the jobs being done today, and more people for other types of jobs. It’s difficult to know exactly where this will play out over time, but over the next few years we expect this to reduce our overall workforce as we gain efficiencies from using AI at scale across the business.”