US technology giant Amazon has confirmed it will cut 16,000 global jobs, just hours after it accidentally told many staff about a new round of global redundancies in an email apparently sent by mistake.
The email was sent late on Tuesday night and refers to a swathe of employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica having been laid off as part of an effort to “strengthen the company.”
The message was apparently shared by mistake, as it was quickly cancelled.
Early on Wednesday, Amazon announced job reductions as part of a plan to “remove bureaucracy” at the firm.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, said on Wednesday it was not planning to make “broad reductions every few months”, referring to Amazon’s announcement of 14,000 job cuts in October.
“While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now,” she said.
On Tuesday, a draft email written by Colleen Aubrey, a senior vice president at Amazon Web Services (AWS), was included in a calendar invitation sent by an executive assistant to a number of Amazon workers.
The title of the invitation was “Send project Dawn email,” an apparent reference to Amazon’s code name for the job cuts.
While the email made clear that layoffs were happening at Amazon, employees had not yet been officially informed.
“This is a continuation of the work we’ve been doing for more than a year to strengthen the company by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy, so that we can move faster for customers,” the email said.
“Changes like this are hard on everyone. These decisions are difficult and made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success,” it added.
It is understood the majority of the impacted jobs will be in Amazon’s North American operations, but UK jobs are also expected to be hit, although Amazon has so far declined to offer a breakdown. Amazon currently employs around 75,000 people across its operations in the UK, including at its corporate office in Manchester, development centre in Edinburgh, and fulfilment centres in Manchester, Bolton, Doncaster and Hull.
Since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stood down as its chief executive four years ago, his successor Andy Jassy has led the company through several rounds of layoffs in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Jassy has also attempted to bring a more strict work culture to the firm.
Rachel Fagan, organiser at the GMB Union, said: “Amazon is showing itself for what it is; a company that cannot be trusted to do the right thing by working people in the UK.
“Bosses are overseeing thousands of job losses which will cause huge damage in towns and cities across the country. Now is the time for decision makers to recognise Amazon as a company fixated on eye-watering profits at the expense of workers and local people.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the company announced it would close its roughly 70 remaining Amazon-branded grocery stores, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and expand its Whole Foods Market business worldwide as it backs away from bricks-and-mortar retail and refocuses on its core online business.
