Amazon Cuts 15% of HR Jobs as AI Spending Continues

Amazon is reportedly planning a widespread series of job cuts in various corporate divisions.

Those cuts could include up to 15% of the tech giant’s human resources (HR) staff, Fortune reported late Tuesday (Oct. 14), citing multiple sources familiar with the plans.

Aside from HR, other areas of the company’s consumer business are also likely to be affected, two of the sources said.

The Fortune report notes that the cuts are happening at a time when Amazon is seeking ways to reduce employee costs while spending heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) products and infrastructure for in-house use and as an enterprise offering.

Amazon has said it aims to spend more than $100 billion in capital expenditures this year, as it expands its cloud and AI datacenters.

This follows a series of layoffs in other parts of the company earlier this year, including consumer devices unit, the Wondery podcast arm, and in Amazon Web Services (AWS). At the time, Amazon noted that it was still hiring throughout the company, including AWS roles.

While those layoffs came soon after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that artificial intelligence (AI) would lead to job cuts, the company stressed to PYMNTS at the time that these cuts were not connected to AI, but instead followed a review of areas that could be streamlined.

PYMNTS has reached out to Amazon for comment about this latest round of cuts, but has not yet gotten a reply.

Jassy in June sent a message to Amazon workers saying that employees who have learned to use AI will be in a better position to be a part of the company. He added that Amazon’s corporate workforce would likely shrink in the next few years as the company embraces AI, calling it the most transformative technology since the advent of the internet.

“Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company,” Jassy said in the message.

Research from PYMNTS Intelligence, from the report “Workers Say Fears About GenAI Taking Their Jobs Is Overblown,” found that more than half (54%) of workers said that generative AI posed a “significant risk of widespread job displacement.”

The study also found that 38% of workers said they were worried the technology could eventually lead to their jobs being eliminated.