Amazon announces 16,000 layoffs, the second major cut in three months
The tech company's decision, which it attributes to "overhiring" due to the pandemic, will not have any effects in Spain.
BarcelonaAmazon has announced a new wave of layoffs that will affect 16,000 people worldwide, none of them in Spain. This is the second major restructuring by the e-commerce and cloud computing giant in the last three months, following the one in January. will announce the departure of 18,000 peopleOf these, 791 were in the corporate offices in Barcelona. The company attributes this second wave to the restructuring process following the era of overhiring resulting from the pandemic.
Thus, the figure rises to 34,000 people, a small part of the more than 1.5 million employees the company has worldwide. Although in November the company set it at 10,000 The layoffs, announced in mid-January, raised the total to 18,000 people. At that time, the most affected departments were human resources and the "stores" division. In an internal memo, the company's CEO, Andy Jassy, attributed the decision to economic uncertainty and the high number of contracts signed in recent years. According to Reuters, Amazon was planning a second round of cuts last week as part of a broader target of 30,000 jobs. The layoffs are now expected to occur in Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and human resources departments. Amazon's senior vice president and head of global and legal affairs, David Zapolsky, has said that the planned reduction will have "a minimal effect" on its on-the-ground operations in Europe. She said this in a virtual appearance before the European Parliament's Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, explaining that the decision will primarily affect corporate staff. This same Wednesday, the company's manager in Spain, Ruth Díaz, confirmed that the company does not plan to initiate any collective dismissal procedures in Spain.
The impact of AI on the labor market
In this meeting, Zapolsky explained that this staff reduction is not motivated by artificial intelligence (AI), but by the desire to ensure the workforce is "the right size for the business." However, the tech giant is currently in the midst of a race to develop AI, and a few months ago Jassy had stated that the increasing use of AI tools would mean greater automation of tasks, leading to a reduction in corporate jobs.
The latest edition of the studySalary evolution 2007-2025A study presented last week at a press conference by the Eada business school and the human resources consultancy ICSA found that a "dismantling" of middle management positions was taking place due to the integration of artificial intelligence into the workplace. This process, according to the study, is causing an "organizational flattening," eliminating supervisory and quality control roles, leaving room only for the other two categories: managers and workers.