Amazon has told staff it plans to cut around 16,000 jobs globally as part of efforts to streamline its operations.
It is the latest major round of lay-offs at the retail technology giant, coming only three months after it axed around 14,000 jobs.
It is understood that the majority of jobs impacted by the latest cuts will be in the US, but the UK operation will see some jobs axed.
The company did not disclose how many UK workers will be affected.
On Tuesday, the company appeared to have prematurely alerted Amazon Web Services cloud-computing employees to layoffs planned for Wednesday morning by sending a commiseration email and team-wide meeting invitation hours early.
The email, signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, wrongly said that impacted employees in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica had already been informed they lost their jobs.
“Changes like this are hard on everyone,” Aubrey wrote in the email. “These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success.”
Last summer, Amazon boss Andy Jassy said that the company was likely to reduce its staff count over the coming years as it increases its use of artificial intelligence for many tasks.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jobs in the company’s units covering AWS, retail, Prime Video and human resources were slated to be affected.
Amazon laid off about 14,000 people in October as part of a broader plan to reduce corporate staff by around 30,000, people familiar with the matter said at the time.
This is a breaking news story.
