30,000 employees laid off! The company says machines are now doing human work.

Amazon is planning another major layoff. Starting next week, it will begin laying off approximately 30,000 corporate employees. This represents approximately 10% of Amazon’s total 350,000 corporate staff. The company is on a cost-cutting mission due to overhiring during the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing automation fueled by AI. CEO Andy Jassy is calling this a “much-needed structural change” to ensure Amazon remains competitive in the rapidly changing tech world.

Amazon’s largest layoff since 2022 – According to a Reuters report, Amazon will begin these layoffs on Tuesday. This will be the company’s largest job cut since 2022, when it eliminated approximately 27,000 jobs. These cuts will be made across the HR (People Experience & Technology), Operations, Devices, and AWS (Amazon Web Services) divisions.

While this number may be small in terms of total employees (out of 1.55 million), at the corporate level, it’s a significant blow, affecting approximately 1 in 10 employees.

AI and overhiring are two major reasons: The company has internally acknowledged that many tasks have been automated due to AI tools, rendering thousands of positions “redundant.” CEO Andy Jassy previously stated that AI is helping us complete repetitive tasks faster and more accurately, meaning we don’t need as many people as before.

Amazon hired heavily during COVID-19 when online demand surged.

Now, as retail growth slows and pressure on its cloud unit, AWS, increases, the company has returned to a cost-cutting strategy.