Amazon retail division hit by job cuts

Amazon has announced a small reduction in workforce, specifically within its retail division which manages the primary e-commerce platform. The layoffs coincide with one of the company's biggest shopping events, known as Prime Big Deal Days. This promotion started on Tuesday and will continue through Wednesday, offering varying discounts.

These cuts are the latest in a series of small reductions that began with a larger round of 30,000 job cuts last year and continued into January. A few employees affected by the layoffs reached out to Reuters, sharing posts from internal Slack channels about the news. Amazon let go of fewer than 1,000 white-collar workers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Amazon previously confirmed to Business Insider that it was making these reductions. A spokesperson for the company stated, "We have adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities." Amazon is targeting as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, according to sources.

The internal Slack channel indicated that several divisions within Stores were involved, including customer service and selling partner services, and potentially other units across Amazon. Employees from the US, India, and the UK were among those receiving pink slips. During a Fox News interview aired on Wednesday, Amazon's founder and executive chairman, Jeff Bezos, stated that ongoing job 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," Bezos said when asked about the 30,000 jobs lost in the previous round. "The whole team worked extremely hard and did so much, but we really grew our head count."