Amazon is preparing to cut up to 30,000 corporate jobs starting Tuesday. This information comes from people who are aware of the company’s plans. The layoffs are happening because Amazon hired too many employees during the pandemic, when online shopping demand was very high. Now, the company wants to reduce costs as business conditions have changed.

Amazon has a total of about 1.55 million employees globally. Out of them, around 350,000 work in corporate roles. The planned job cut represents about 10 per cent of corporate staff. This would be Amazon’s biggest round of layoffs since late 2022, when around 27,000 jobs were removed. An Amazon spokesperson did not give any official statement on the matter.

Over the past two years, Amazon has already been removing jobs from different departments, such as devices, communications, and podcasting. The new cuts are expected to hit several divisions including human resources, operations, devices and services, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Some managers have been trained to guide affected employees because email notifications about layoffs will begin Tuesday morning.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy  is trying to reduce unnecessary layers of management and make the company more efficient. He even set up an anonymous complaint system so employees could report wasteful processes. This system led to hundreds of changes. Jassy has also said that new artificial intelligence (AI) tools will replace routine tasks, which means fewer people will be needed in some roles.

Experts say the latest job cuts show that AI is already helping Amazon work faster with fewer employees. The company also wants to save money because it is investing heavily in new AI technology. Amazon recently told employees to return to the office five days a week.

The company expected some staff to quit instead of returning, but that did not happen. Now, some employees who are not coming to the office regularly are being told they have already left the company without severance pay. AWS, Amazon’s cloud business and biggest profit maker, has seen slower growth than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

It also faced a major outage last week that disrupted many popular online services. Still, Amazon is preparing for a strong holiday season by hiring 250,000 seasonal workers, just like in previous years. Amazon’s stock rose slightly on Monday, and the company will release its latest quarterly earnings on Thursday.