Business
Amazon CEO Says Expect Cuts to White-Collar Jobs Because of AI
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has a blunt new message about AI: It is going to “reduce” the company’s workforce in the next few years.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy said in a memo posted to the Amazon website. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” he continued.
Amazon currently employs about 1.5 million workers, according to its website. It is unclear how many employees, or in which sectors, would be affected by AI-driven job cuts.
Business Insider previously reported that the company is freezing its hiring budget for its retail business this year.
In a March earnings call, the company announced it would spend $100 billion on capital expenditures, mostly driven by AI investments and data centers, Business Insider reported.
Jassy is not the first executive to suggest that advancements in AI will likely translate to job cuts in their businesses. The conversations around these types of reductions in force have become increasingly common — and less hypothetical.
Allison Kirkby, CEO of the British telecom giant BT, warned that AI may lead to further job cuts at the firm after BT in 2023 announced plans to eliminate as many as 55,000 roles by 2030, Business Insider previously reported.
In late May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggested AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said earlier this month that he expects the impact of AI on white-collar jobs to be so significant that it will lead to a recession.
“It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, project manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person — AI is coming for you,” Micha Kaufman, the the CEO and founder of the freelance-job site Fiverr, wrote in an April email to employees that he shared on LinkedIn.
Jassy had some advice for workers in his statement about how to navigate the changing professional landscape, describing AI as “the most transformative technology since the Internet.”
“As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your team’s brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams,” Jassy said. “Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company.”
When reached by Business Insider, an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment further on Jassy’s remarks.
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Why Chuck Robbins and Jeetu Patel believe Cisco’s AI reinvention is working
Just days before Nvidia stormed past $4 trillion market cap, setting off another frenzied rally around artificial intelligence (AI)-linked stocks, a quieter, less meme-able tech giant, Cisco Systems, was building a case for relevance, led by its top brass, Chuck Robbins and Jeetu Patel, in the heart of Mumbai. Long seen as a legacy stalwart of the dotcom era, Cisco today trades at a market cap of $272 billion, a far cry from its 2000 peak of $500 billion. But for its CEO Chuck Robbins and president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel, the story has only begun to play out now.
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Martin Lewis' trick for haggling with a call centre
Contract ending or ended? Try this if you’re renewing your broadband/TV, mobile, car/home insurance or breakdown cover.
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Business
Rachel Reeves to try to reassure City investors after unexpected UK GDP fall | Economic growth (GDP)
Rachel Reeves will attempt to shrug off the UK’s anaemic economic performance at her Mansion House speech next week, after the latest official figures showed the economy unexpectedly shrank in May.
The chancellor is expected to say the City is at the heart of her vision for sparking economic growth, as she battles to seize back the narrative after worse than expected GDP figures, and a bleak warning from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) about the state of the public finances.
The economy shrank by 0.1% in May, the Office for National Statistics said, fuelled by sharp declines in manufacturing and construction.
It was the second month of contraction in a row after a 0.3% drop in GDP in April, and amplified speculation that taxes would have to go up again in the autumn budget.
But less than a fortnight after bond markets sold off government debt amid a flurry of speculation about her future, Reeves will claim Labour is creating an economy, “where people and businesses look to the future and talk about hope, about opportunity”.
She will tell City investors at the historic Guildhall on Tuesday that workers and businesses can be “assured of their own capability, and of the ability of our country to boldly face the challenges that lie ahead. And certain of the prize if they succeed, of higher wages and higher living standards.”
Business groups have blamed Reeves’s £25bn increase in employer national insurance contributions, which came into force in April, for weighing on growth, at the same time as Donald Trump’s trade war sapped confidence.
But she is expected to stress in the speech Labour’s determination to deliver security, pointing to the importance of the government’s plans for public investment, as well as recent trade deals with India and the US.
The GDP figures showed that declines in construction, oil and gas extraction, car manufacturing and the production of pharmaceuticals outweighed a return to growth in Britain’s dominant service sector, amid a slump in activity after a strong first quarter.
“These downbeat figures undoubtedly increase anxiety over the health of the UK economy, with tumbling construction and manufacturing activity causing a disheartening decline in overall output,” said Suren Thiru, the economics director at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
The data came as Labour’s growth plans are under the microscope amid mounting speculation over the need for large tax rises at the autumn budget after Keir Starmer’s high-stakes welfare U-turn this month.
Ministers have warned of “financial consequences” after the government backtracked on changes to disability benefits that would have been worth more than £5bn in savings for the Treasury. That adds to the £1.25bn the Treasury needs to find to cover May’s climbdown on winter fuel payments.
Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, said Labour’s U-turns had “created a ticking tax timebomb” for the economy. “Thanks to Labour’s reckless choices the economy actually shrank in May. This will pile even further pressure for tax rises in the autumn.”
Ben Jones, the lead economist at the Confederation of British Industry, said: “With growing fiscal challenges and the autumn budget on the horizon, the chancellor must provide clear reassurance – no new taxes on business and instead offer a commitment to work alongside firms to dismantle barriers to growth.”
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However, economists said the slump in April and May did not paint an entirely accurate picture because it reflected businesses shifting activity around government tax changes and Trump’s tariff deadlines.
Britain’s economy had grown rapidly in the first quarter of 2025, outstripping other countries in the G7 with an expansion of 0.7%. However, much of that was driven by exporters scrambling to beat the US president’s 2 April “liberation day” tariff announcement.
Manufacturing output had risen sharply in the first three months of the year amid an increase in exports. The property sector had also boomed before the expiry of a temporary cut in stamp duty in England and Northern Ireland, leading to a slump in activity in April and May.
However, activity is expected to remain subdued over the rest of the year amid heightened uncertainty, elevated borrowing costs and fragile business and consumer confidence. The OBR has forecast GDP growth of 1% for 2025 as a whole but will revisit that projection in the run-up to the autumn budget.
While the UK has struck a deal with the US to mitigate Trump’s steepest tariffs, alongside forging closer ties with the EU, the Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, has warned that trade policy uncertainty still clouds the outlook.
Economists widely expect the Bank’s monetary policy committee to cut interest rates from the current level of 4.25% at its next meeting in August, amid mounting concerns over the strength of the economy despite lingering inflationary pressures.
Sanjay Raja, the chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank, said: “For now, weakness in GDP will cement some on the MPC’s fears that demand is loosening faster than expected. An August rate cut looks almost certain. And we expect more to come.”
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