Amazon cuts further jobs in Stores unit as Prime sale event kicks off

Amazon has confirmed it cut a small number of jobs on Wednesday, primarily in its Stores unit, which oversees the company’s main e-commerce website, Reuters reported.

The cuts coincide with one of Amazon’s biggest shopping events, Prime Big Deal Days, which started on Tuesday and runs through Wednesday. The company let go fewer than 1,000 white-collar workers, according to a person familiar with the matter. Business Insider first reported the layoffs.

The move is the latest in a series of smaller reductions since a larger round of 30,000 job cuts that began last year and continued into January. Internal Slack posts shared with Reuters by affected employees pointed to divisions including customer service and selling partner services, with employees in the US, India and the UK among those affected.

An Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement: “We’ve adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities.”

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, said in a Fox News interview aired on Wednesday that continued cuts were necessary because the company overhired 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. “We really grew our head count.”