Amazon confirms plans to cut around 16,000 jobs globally

This latest round brings Amazon’s corporate layoffs to roughly 30,000 since October, when it first announced plans to shed 14,000 roles.

The company does not publish a corporate headcount, but it is widely estimated at around 350,000 employees.

In a statement, Ms Galleti said: "I want to let you know that we're making additional organisational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates.

"I recognise this is difficult news, which is why I’m sharing what’s happening and why.

"As I shared in October, we've been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.

"While many teams finalised their organisational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now."

Amazon had inadvertently confirmed a fresh wave of global job cuts before the statement, after a draft internal message from a senior executive was mistakenly shared with staff.

The communication was authored by Colleen Aubrey, a senior vice president at Amazon Web Services, and circulated via a calendar invitation sent by an executive assistant on Tuesday evening.

The message referred to employees in the United States, Canada and Costa Rica losing their roles as part of efforts to strengthen the technology company.

The correspondence was withdrawn shortly after it was sent.

Amazon declined to comment when contacted about the disclosure.

Employees had not received any formal notification of redundancies before the message was accidentally circulated.

The calendar invitation was titled “Send project Dawn email”, revealing the internal codename Amazon is using for its workforce reduction programme.

After being introduced, Ms Aubrey wrote that the job losses were part of a longer-term restructuring process.

She said: “This is a continuation of the work we've been doing for more than a year to strengthen the company by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy, so that we can move faster for customers”.

Ms Aubrey acknowledged the impact of the decisions on staff in the same message.

It read: “Changes like this are hard on everyone. These decisions are difficult and made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success”.

The email also referenced a separate message from Beth Galetti, Amazon’s human resources chief, which indicated that affected employees in the three countries had already been informed of their job losses.

AWS staff who received the mistaken notification reported internally that a scheduled meeting planned for Wednesday was cancelled shortly afterwards.

The disclosure forms part of a wider restructuring effort at Amazon that is expected to affect around 30,000 roles globally.

Amazon previously eliminated around 14,000 positions in late October, marking the first phase of the reduction programme.

A former Amazon employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said staff had anticipated further job cuts for several weeks.

The former employee said colleagues understood management intended to reach the 30,000 target through additional rounds of redundancies.

They said the company had been expected to announce further reductions this month, with job losses continuing until the end of May.

Employees who are made redundant are being offered the opportunity to apply for other vacant roles within Amazon.

Available positions remain limited, according to staff familiar with the process.

Workers who are unable to secure alternative roles within the company receive severance packages based on their length of service.

The redundancies are part of a broader cost-cutting drive that has affected major technology companies since 2022.

Firms including Meta, Google and Microsoft have collectively cut tens of thousands of jobs each year during that period.

Figures from Layoffs.fyi show that roughly 700,000 roles have been eliminated across the global technology sector over the past four years.

Meta has already reduced its workforce by several hundred employees this year.

Pinterest announced around 700 job losses earlier this week.

Since becoming chief executive four years ago, Andy Jassy has overseen a series of operational changes at Amazon.

Under Mr Jassy, the company has introduced stricter workplace policies across its corporate workforce.

Amazon now requires employees to attend the office five days a week, making it one of the few major technology firms to mandate full-time in-person working.

On the same day the draft email was mistakenly sent, Amazon announced it would close its remaining 70 Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores.

The store closures were announced separately and were not directly linked to the AWS workforce reductions.