Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that it had cut a small number of jobs, primarily within its Stores unit, the division responsible for its main e-commerce business. The timing coincided with the company’s Prime Big Deal Days promotional event, which began on Tuesday and runs through Wednesday.
Fewer than 1,000 white-collar workers were let go, according to a person familiar with the matter. Employees in the US, India and the UK were among those affected.
Internal Slack posts shared by affected employees indicated that divisions including customer service and selling partner services were among those hit, though other units across Amazon may also have been involved.
“We’ve adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement, according to a report by Reuters.
The cuts are the latest in a series of smaller reductions following a larger round of 30,000 job losses that began last year and continued into January.
In a Fox News interview aired Wednesday, founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos attributed the need for ongoing reductions to overhiring during the pandemic.
“People were staying home and they were ordering, and it was an incredible, stressful period for us, by the way,” he said, reflecting on that period. “The whole team worked extremely hard and did so much, but we really grew our head count.”
