Amazon is preparing to announce sweeping job cuts beginning Tuesday, CNBC has learned.

The layoffs will amount to the largest cuts to Amazon’s corporate workforce in the company’s history, spanning almost every business, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

Amazon is expected to begin informing employees of the layoffs via email Tuesday morning, the person said.

The company plans to lay off as many as 30,000 staffers across its corporate workforce, according to Reuters, which first reported the news.

Amazon declined to comment.

Amazon is the nation’s second-largest private employer, with more than 1.54 million staffers globally as of the end of the second quarter. That figure is primarily made up of its warehouse workforce. It has roughly 350,000 corporate employees.

The planned layoffs would also represent the biggest job cuts across the tech industry since at least 2020, according to Layoffs.fyi. As of Monday, more than 200 tech companies have laid off approximately 98,000 employees since the start of the year, according to the site, which monitors job cuts in the tech sector.

Microsoft has laid off about 15,000 people so far this year, while Meta last week eliminated roughly 600 jobs within its artificial intelligence unit. Google cut more than 100 design-related roles in its cloud unit earlier this month, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in September the company laid off 4,000 customer support staffers, pointing to its increasing AI adoption as a catalyst behind the cuts. Intel’s cuts this year totaled 22,000 jobs, the most of any listed by Layoffs.fyi.

The steepest year for job cuts in tech came in 2023, as the industry reckoned with soaring inflation and rising interest rates. Close to 1,200 tech companies slashed over 260,000 jobs, the site said.

Over the past year, companies across industries including tech, banking, auto and retail have also pointed to the rise of generative AI as a force that’s likely to or already changing size of their workforces.

Amazon has conducted rolling layoffs across the company since 2022, which has resulted in more than 27,000 employees being let go. Job reductions have continued this year, though at a smaller scale. Amazon’s cloud, stores, communications and devices divisions have been hit with layoffs in recent months.

The layoffs are part of a broader cost-cutting campaign by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy that began during the Covid-19 pandemic. Jassy has also moved to simplify Amazon’s corporate structure by having fewer managers in order to “remove layers and flatten organizations.”

‍

Read full article here