Amazon, which announced plans this week to reduce its global corporate workforce by about 14,000 jobs, says it is laying off 760 jobs in Southern California beginning in January as part of a shakeup driven by artificial intelligence.
Overall, Amazon says it will cut 1,540 positions in California — including 783 in Northern California, according to Vani Appukkutty, a senior manager in the company’s human resources department. In Southern California, layoffs are coming to Irvine (333), Culver City (152), San Diego (145) and Santa Monica (130).
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The layoffs begin Jan. 26 and finish by April 1, Appukkutty wrote in Oct. 28 letters filed with the state’s Employment Development Department.
“Employee separations resulting from this action are expected to be permanent,” she wrote.
The filings were made as part of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — commonly referred to as WARN — which are required when an employer lays off more than 50 employees. All affected employees are notified at least 60 days before their terminations are scheduled to occur, according to Appukkutty.
The layoffs include positions for business intelligence, data, software and security engineers, contract managers, creative marketers, financial analysts, game artists and designers, lawyers, product managers, tax analysts and other administrative staff, according to the EDD letters.
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Appukkutty did not provide reasons for the layoffs or where in the tech giant the reductions would happen. However, news reports said that Amazon.com was gutting its video-game division in Irvine, San Diego and its central publishing division. The retailer also announced Oct. 3 that it would close four of its Amazon Fresh supermarkets in Southern California by mid-November as it reevaluates store performance.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president in charge of Amazon’s human resources department, wrote in an Oct. 28 blog post that artificial intelligence is enabling companies to “innovate much faster than ever before.”
In announcing the 14,000 corporate layoffs, Galetti wrote that Amazon is convinced of the “need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
She said that the reductions are a continuation of the work to get even “stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources” to invest in Amazon’s future.
The corporate layoffs mean “reducing in some areas and hiring in others,” she added.
For instance, Amazon announced in early October that it planned to fill 30,000 new seasonal roles across California, including up to 8,000 roles in Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario — as well as up to 3,000 roles for the upcoming holidays across Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim, and 1,300 roles in San Diego, Chula Vista and Carlsbad.
Many of the seasonal roles have the potential to transition into year-round employment with benefits, said Amazon spokeswoman Carly Levy in an Oct. 14 statement.