Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Oct. 28, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for over hiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.
The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would represent the largest job cut at Amazon since around 27,000 jobs were eliminated starting in late 2022.
It is unclear exactly how many employees at Amazon’s Nashville headquarters, if any, will be affected. A representative of the company did not immediately respond to The Tennessean’s request for more information.
The staffing reductions could impact a variety of divisions within Amazon, including human resources — known as People Experience and Technology, devices and services and operations, among others, the sources said. Managers of impacted teams were asked to undergo training on Oct. 27 about how to communicate with staff following email notifications that will start going out on Tuesday morning, according to sources.
A view of the Amazon towers on Church Street Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023 in Nashville, Tenn.
The news comes as companies race to adopt AI into their operations and find inefficiencies, or everyday tasks that can be automated or streamlined.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is undertaking an initiative to reduce what he has described as an excess of bureaucracy at the company, including by reducing the number of managers. He installed an anonymous complaint line to identify inefficiencies that has elicited about 1,500 responses and over 450 process changes, he said earlier this year. Jassy said in June that the increased use of artificial intelligence tools would likely lead to further job cuts, particularly through automating repetitive and routine tasks.
Amazon’s Nashville operations hub consists of the company’s downtown corporate office complex, originally announced in 2018. The company in 2020 announced it had hired its first 1,000 local employees for tech and corporate roles. Thousands of full-time, part-time and seasonal employees work in Amazon’s offices and distribution centers across the Middle Tennessee region.
The company announced earlier this month it would hire 250,000 seasonal workers to help with the holiday shopping season, including 9,000 people in Tennessee. About 4,000 of those Tennessee hires would be needed in the Nashville area.
Molly Davis contributed to this report.
Molly Davis covers growth and development in Nashville. You can email her with comments, questions and tips at mmdavis@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Amazon may lay off up to 30K corporate employees, sources say
