Amazon to lay off thousands of corporate employees next week

Amazon could lay off thousands of corporate employees next week, according to reports.

A pair of anonymous sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that a second round of cuts was part of a 30,000-job reduction that saw 14,000 Amazon corporate employees laid off in October.

The cuts this time, the sources told Reuters, are expected to be close to the October firings and could happen as soon as Tuesday.

On a third-quarter earnings call at the end of October, Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy said the layoffs were “not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven, not right now, at least. It really — it’s culture. And if you grow as fast as we did for several years … you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers.”

Mr. Jassy also said that “as a leadership team, we are committed to operating like the world’s largest start-up. And that means removing layers. It means increasing the amount of ownership that people have, and it means inventing and moving quickly. … It’s important to be lean, it’s important to be flat, and it’s important to move fast,” as transcribed by SeekingAlpha.

At the time the layoffs were reported in October, the retail giant had about 350,000 corporate employees worldwide. If the next round of layoffs goes through, the combination would be Amazon’s largest layoffs since 2022, when 27,000 positions were axed, according to Reuters.

Amazon has not yet responded to a request for comment.