Amazon has announced plans to cut 14,000 of its 350,000 corporate jobs and replace those roles with AI. Others who work at the retail giant claim the actual layoffs will be closer to 30,000 people.
MobileSyrup has reached out to see if any of the layoffs will impact Canadians, but did not receive a response before publication. Amazon also declined to comment to several other publications that covered the layoffs.
Amazon’s press release regarding the layoffs says that most affected personnel will be given 90 days’ notice to make sure they have time to find a new job internally, and its recruiting teams are now instructed to focus on internal hires. That said, it doesn’t seem like it will have space to re-hire all these people.
After speaking with anonymous Amazon workers, Reuters reported that the company was training its managers on how to conduct the layoffs on Monday. The same report also mentions that AWS alone made US$30.9 billion (roughly C$43.1 billion) in Q2 of this year.
At least Amazon is being transparent about laying off workers because of AI. We’ve seen many other companies, and I won’t name names, lay off employees this year for mysterious reasons that were never shared, but from the outside looking in, it appears to be AI-related.
Bloomberg has reported that this will impact people in logistics, payments, video games, and AWS teams.
This isn’t Amazon’s first round of bad news for the company’s employees this year. Earlier this month, it also emerged that the company plans to use robots to fill 600,000 jobs by 2033. Amazon was also recently under fire for its decision to pull out of Quebec after warehouse workers unionized.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
