Amazon has cut 1,000 corporate jobs, with the majority of roles affected sitting within its Stores division, which oversees the retailer’s core ecommerce operations.
The latest round of redundancies has affected employees in the US, UK and India, with roles across customer service and selling partner services among those reportedly impacted.
Amazon confirmed the cuts, describing them as a “small number” of roles, and said it had made changes to its Stores business to better align its structure with its priorities.
Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, said in a Fox News interview aired Wednesday 07 October, that continued job cuts have been necessary because the company overhired during the pandemic.
“People were staying home and they were ordering, and it was an incredible, stressful period for us, by the way,” he said when asked about the 30,000 jobs lost in the previous round.”
Related Story
“The whole team worked extremely hard and did so much, but we really grew our head count,” he added.
The latest redundancies follow a much larger round of cuts at Amazon, with around 30,000 jobs eliminated since last year. The company has increasingly pointed to AI and organisational efficiency as drivers behind its restructuring.
In September, Amazon invested in its UK warehouse operations, increasing pay for tens of thousands of its UK frontline workers taking minimum full-time salaries above £31,000 a year.
The company has raised its minimum starting wage for operations staff by up to 5.6 per cent, with hourly pay now starting at £15.10 and rising to £16.10 depending on location.
Amazon has also continued opening new fulfilment centres and logistics sites across the country as it expands capacity to support its ecommerce operation.
The company said more than 30,000 UK employees have taken part in its Career Choice training programme since its launch in 2014, which provides funding of up to £3,000 a year towards recognised qualifications.
Click here to sign up to Retail Gazette‘s free daily email newsletter
