Amazon lays off retail staff across US, India and UK

Dubai: Amazon confirmed on October 7 that it had cut a small number of jobs, mainly in its Stores unit, which oversees the main e-commerce website. The layoffs came during Prime Big Deal Days, which ran on October 6 and 7.

Staff learned of the cuts on October 6. Employees were told by email, and many discussed the layoffs on an internal Slack channel. Posts on that channel indicate that customer service and selling partner services teams were involved, along with possibly other units across Amazon. Reports also name marketplace support and engineering roles.

Employees in the US, India and the UK received notices. The timing in India drew even more attention as the cuts came as Amazon's Great Indian Festival sale began. The event is among the busiest shopping periods in the country.

The reductions follow a far larger round. The latest cuts continue a series of small reductions since a round of 30,000 job losses that began last year and ran into January. The company confirmed 16,000 of those corporate cuts on January 28, as management moved to flatten layers and reduce bureaucracy.

Redirecting capital towards AI?

Founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos addressed the issue in a television interview aired October 7. He attributes the continued cuts to pandemic overhiring. Online orders surged when people stayed home, and Amazon expanded headcount to keep up. He called that stretch an incredibly stressful period for the company.

The layoffs run alongside heavy investment. Amazon plans record spending of $220 billion (Dh808 billion) on data centres, chips and related infrastructure, as it pushes deeper into artificial intelligence. The company is cutting costs in its retail arm while it directs capital towards AI.

The Stores division covers the consumer website, customer support and the services that sellers use to list and ship products. Changes there reach a wide base of shoppers and merchants. Whether the restructuring alters service levels during peak sale periods is not yet clear.

Amazon has not said how many roles went in each country. It has not disclosed whether further cuts are planned.