Overview
- Amazon's latest reductions focus on corporate functions and equal about 4.6% of its roughly 350,000 white‑collar workforce, bringing recent cuts to more than 30,000 after prior rounds of about 14,000.
- Affected U.S. staff are being given up to 90 days to seek internal transfers into growth areas such as cloud and AI before severance options.
- Mercado Livre confirmed 119 layoffs across Latin America, including 38 in Brazil, in user‑experience roles tied to expanded use of AI tools.
- OECD findings indicate fewer than 10% of jobs face high risk of full automation, with most occupations shifting through the automation of specific tasks and rising demand for data literacy, basic coding and critical thinking.
- Experts and studies caution that adoption driven only by cost cutting can undermine service quality, whereas strategies centered on growth and retraining are more likely to deliver durable productivity gains.