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Amazon is preparing to lay off as many as 30,000 corporate employees in a sweeping workforce reduction intended to reduce expenses and compensate for over-hiring during the pandemic, according to a report from Reuters on Monday. GeekWire has contacted Amazon for comment. Layoff notifications will start going out via email on Tuesday, according to Reuters, which cited people familiar with the matter. One employee at Amazon told GeekWire the workforce is on “pins and needles” in anticipation of cuts. Bloomberg reported that cuts will impact several business units, including logistics, payments, video games, and Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s corporate workforce numbered around 350,000 in early 2023. It has not provided an updated number since then. The company’s last significant layoff occurred in 2023 when it cut 27,000 corporate workers in multiple stages. Since then the company has made a series of smaller layoffs across different business units. Fortune reported this month that Amazon planned to cut up to 15% of its human resources staff as part of a wider layoff. Amazon has taken a cautious hiring approach with its corporate workforce, following years of huge headcount growth. The company’s corporate headcount tripled between 2017 and 2022, according to The Information. The reported cuts come as Amazon is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. The company said earlier this year it expects to increase capital expenditures to more than $100 billion in 2025, up from $83 billion in 2024, with a majority going toward building out capacity for AI in AWS. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also hinted at potential workforce impact from generative AI earlier this year in a memo to employees that was shared publicly. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” he wrote. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.” Amazon reported 1.54 million total employees as of June 30 — up 3% year-over-year. The majority of the company’s workforce is made up of warehouse workers. Amazon employs roughly 50,000 corporate and tech workers in buildings across its Seattle headquarters, with another 12,000 in Bellevue. The company reports its third quarter earnings on Thursday afternoon. Fellow Seattle-area tech giant Microsoft has laid off more than 15,000 people since May as it too invests in AI and data center capacity. Microsoft has cut more than 3,200 roles in Washington this year. Last week, The New York Times cited internal Amazon documents and interviews to report that the company plans to automate as much as 75% of its warehouse operations by 2033. According to the report, the robotics team expects automation to “flatten Amazon’s hiring curve over the next 10 years,” allowing it to avoid hiring more than 600,000 workers even as sales continue to grow. GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser contributed to this story.
