Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that it had cut what it called a small number of jobs, primarily in its Stores unit that runs the main e-commerce site, with Reuters reporting fewer than 1,000 white-collar workers affected across the US, India and the UK. Internal Slack channels showed customer service and selling-partner services among the groups hit. The cuts landed in the middle of Prime Big Deal Days, the two-day promotion that started Tuesday.
The move extends the cleanup after Amazon’s pandemic hiring spree, following a much larger round of roughly 30,000 job reductions that began last year and continued into January. In a Fox News interview aired Wednesday, founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos framed the continued trimming as a response to overhiring when stay-at-home demand spiked.