Amazon will cut back its world company workforce by about 14,000 folks from Tuesday, Oct 28, with extra cuts anticipated in 2026, and business observers say Singapore is probably not spared. The layoffs are smaller than the 30,000 job losses earlier stories had indicated.
The transfer comes as a part of a main shakeup pushed partially by the corporate’s growing adoption of synthetic intelligence (AI), in addition to efforts to deal with over-hiring in the course of the pandemic and management prices forward of the essential vacation procuring season.
Amazon at present employs about 1.56 million folks worldwide, together with roughly 350,000 company staff. In Singapore, the corporate has round 2,500 workers throughout its cloud, company, retail, know-how, and operations features. Town-state additionally serves as Amazon’s Asia-Pacific headquarters.
An Amazon spokesperson for the area didn’t reply a question on whether or not the job cuts would have an effect on staff right here in Singapore, however referred The Straits Occasions to Amazon Senior Vice President of Human Sources Beth Galetti’s memo.
Galetti despatched letters to staff’ private e mail addresses early Tuesday morning that learn: “You’re not required to carry out work on Amazon’s behalf.”
The letter added that the corporate is giving most workers 90 days to discover a new function internally, together with severance pay, outplacement companies, and continued medical health insurance protection for these affected by the layoffs.
She defined that the layoffs are a part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to chop forms and reporting layers, and shift sources to its “greatest bets,” which she didn’t specify. Galetti added that the corporate would proceed to rent in key strategic areas whereas persevering with job cuts in 2026, as CEO Andy Jassy talked about earlier this yr.
Amazon’s newest spherical of layoffs represents its deepest job cuts since 27,000 jobs had been eradicated in late 2022 and early 2023. The transfer comes regardless of the agency being worthwhile—in 2024, Amazon reported revenues of US$638 billion (S$826 billion) and working earnings exceeding US$68 billion.
“The world is altering shortly. This technology of AI is probably the most transformative know-how we’ve seen for the reason that web, and it’s enabling corporations to innovate a lot quicker than ever earlier than,” defined Galetti on why the agency proceeded with the layoffs.
She added: “We must be organised extra leanly, with fewer layers and extra possession, to maneuver as shortly as potential for our prospects and enterprise.”
Amazon joins a slew of tech giants making job cuts in Singapore, together with Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok, in addition to companies throughout the banking, power, media, and manufacturing sectors. In accordance with official figures, greater than 7,000 staff had been laid off in Singapore within the first half of 2025.
- Learn different job-related articles we’ve written right here.
Featured Picture Credit score: Jaap Arriens by way of NurPhoto
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