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(Sharecast News) - Amazon is set to announce thousands of job cuts in the coming days, it was reported on Friday, as the tech and retail giant looks to shrink its corporate workforce.
The US company axed around 14,000 white collar jobs last autumn, but according to Reuters, Amazon is now planning a second wave of a similar amount. Citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Reuters said the lay-offs could start from next Tuesday.
Staff working at Amazon Web Services and Prime Video, as well as in retail and HR, are most likely to be affected, although the sources acknowledged that Amazon's plans could yet change.
Amazon has so far declined to comment.
However, in a third-quarter conference call with analysts last year, chief executive Andy Jassy denied the October lay-offs were related to the increasing use of artificial intelligence.
Instead, he said it was "not really financial driven and it's not even really AI-driven. It's culture, meaning the company has too much bureaucracy. You end up with a lot more than people than what you had before, and you end with a lot more layers," Reuters reported.
Jassy had previously said that long term, he expected Amazon's corporate workforce to shrink on the back of AI-related efficiencies.
Seattle-based Amazon employs around 1.58m worldwide, the majority of whom work in fulfilment centres and warehouses.
Taken with the 14,000 job cuts announced in October, a similar number of redundancies would represent around 10% of the corporate workforce, however, Reuters noted.
As at noon GMT, Amazon's Nasdaq-listed stock was largely unchanged in pre-market trading.
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