Amazon braces for another major round of layoffs, 14,000 jobs at risk

Amazon is expected to undergo another round of layoffs this week, according to an exclusive report from Reuters, in an effort to trim its workforce by approximately 30,000 employees.

This is considered the next round of layoffs that first occurred in October, two sources who asked not to be identified told Reuters. During the October round of layoffs, 14,000 employees were laid off. The second round, which can begin as early as Tuesday, is expected to affect roughly the same number of employees.

Included in the layoffs are jobs within the company’s Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and People Experience and Technology departments.

MyNorthwest has reached out to Amazon for comment.

Layoffs are piling up for Amazon

In October, Amazon cut approximately 14,000 corporate jobs, close to 4% of its workforce, as the online retail giant ramps up spending on AI while trimming costs elsewhere. According to a letter to employees from Beth Galetti, the senior vice president of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, those laid off would be given 90 days to look for a new position internally.

Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million.

In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in 2021, said he anticipated that generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce over the next few years.

Amazon is investing $10 billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Since 2024 began, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio, and North Carolina as it builds up its infrastructure to try to keep up with other tech giants making leaps in AI.

The 14,000 jobs cut in October were the biggest wave of layoffs since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs over a two-month period.

Amazon’s workforce doubled during the pandemic as millions stayed home and boosted online spending. In the following years, big tech and retail companies cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line.

US applications for jobless benefits inch up last week to a still-low 200,000

The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits inched up last week, but U.S. layoffs remain historically low despite signs of a softening labor market.

U.S. filings for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 17 rose by 1,000 to 200,000, up from 199,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s fewer than the 207,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting.

Applications for unemployment benefits are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June, from 4.5% in November, a figure also revised lower.

This is a developing story, check back for updates

Contributing: The Associated Press

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