Amazon is slashing about 16,000 corporate jobs in the second round of mass layoffs for the ecommerce company in three months.

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The tech giant has said it plans to use generative artificial intelligence to replace corporate workers. It has also been reducing a workforce that swelled during the pandemic.

Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, said in a blog post Wednesday that the company has been “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.”

The company did not say what business units would be impacted, or where the job cuts would occur.

The latest reductions follow a round of job cuts in October, when Amazon said it was laying off 14,000 workers. While some Amazon units completed those “organizational changes” in October, others did not finish until now, Galetti said.

She said U.S.-based staff would be given 90 days to look for a new role internally. Those who are unsuccessful or don’t want a new job will be offered severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits, she said.

“While we’re making these changes, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,” Galetti said.

CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively cut costs since succeeding founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, said in June that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the next few years.

The layoffs announced Wednesday are Amazon’s biggest since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, Amazon and other Big Tech and retail companies have cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line following the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon’s workforce doubled as millions stayed home and boosted online spending.

The job cuts have not arrived with a company on shaky financial ground.

In its most recent quarter, Amazon’s profits jumped nearly 40% to about $21 billion and revenue soared to more than $180 billion.

Late last year after layoffs, Jassy said job cuts weren’t driven by company finances or AI.

“It’s culture,” he said in October. “And if you grow as fast as we did for several years, the size of businesses, the number of people, the number of locations, the types of businesses you’re in, you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers.”

Hiring has stagnated in the U.S. and in December, the country added a meager 50,000 jobs, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November.

Labor data points to a reluctance by businesses to add workers even as economic growth has picked up. Many companies hired aggressively after the pandemic and no longer need to fill more jobs. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, elevated inflation, and the spread of artificial intelligence, which could alter or even replace some jobs.

While economists have described the labor situation in the U.S as a “no hire-no fire” environment, some companies have said they are cutting back on jobs, even this week.

On Tuesday, UPS said it planned to cut up to 30,000 operational jobs through attrition and buyouts this year as the package delivery company reduces the number of shipments from what was its largest customer, Amazon.

That followed 34,000 job cuts in October at UPS and the closing of daily operations at 93 leased and owned buildings during the first nine months of last year.

Also on Tuesday, Pinterest said it plans to lay off under 15% of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring that arrives as the image-sharing platform pivots more of its money to artificial intelligence.

Shares of Amazon Inc., based in Seattle, rose slightly before the opening bell Wednesday.

By MATTHEW LEE and STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans on Wednesday to warn that the Trump administration is ready to take new military action against Venezuela if the country’s interim leadership strays from U.S. expectations.

In prepared testimony for a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio says the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela and that its interim leaders are cooperating, but he notes that the Trump administration would not rule out using additional force if needed following a raid to capture then-President Nicolás Maduro early this month.

“We are prepared to use force to ensure maximum cooperation if other methods fail,” Rubio will say, according to his prepared opening statement released Tuesday by the State Department. “It is our hope that this will not prove necessary, but we will never shy away from our duty to the American people and our mission in this hemisphere.”

As he often is called to do, Rubio, a former Florida senator, will aim to sell one of President Donald Trump’s more contentious priorities to former colleagues in Congress. With the Republican administration’s foreign policy gyrating among the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Middle East, Rubio also may be called to smooth alarm that has emerged in his own party lately about efforts like Trump’s demand to annex Greenland.

In the hearing focused on Venezuela, Rubio will defend Trump’s decisions to remove Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the U.S., continue deadly military strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs and seize sanctioned tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, according to the prepared remarks. He will again reject allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution by taking such actions.

“There is no war against Venezuela, and we did not occupy a country,” he will say, according to the prepared remarks. “There are no U.S. troops on the ground. This was an operation to aid law enforcement.”

Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a U.S. court, has defiantly declared himself “the president of my country” and protested his capture.

Congress has not curtailed Trump on Venezuela

Congressional Democrats have condemned Trump’s moves as exceeding the authority of the executive branch, while most Republicans have supported them as a legitimate exercise of presidential power.

Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the chairman of the committee, planned to open the hearing by lauding Trump and Rubio for making Americans safer with the military actions in and around Venezuela and saying they were legal.

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in Washington, after a closed-door briefing about President Donald Trump directing U.S. forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

“These actions were limited in scope, short in duration, and done to protect U.S. interests and citizens,” Risch will say, according to his prepared remarks released by the committee. “What President Trump has done in Venezuela is the definition of the president’s Article II constitutional authorities as commander-in-chief.”

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the committee, was taking the opposite tack, questioning whether the operation to remove Maduro was worth it considering most of his former top aides and lieutenants are still running the country.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., looks on during a press conference with the American delegation, consisting of senators and members of the House of Representatives, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (Ida Marie Odgaard/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

“The U.S. naval blockade around Venezuela and the raid have already cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars … and yet the Maduro regime is still in power,” she plans to say, according to her prepared opening statement.

The House narrowly defeated a war powers act resolution that would have directed Trump to remove U.S. troops from Venezuela. As Rubio will argue, the administration says there are no U.S. troops on the ground in the South American nation despite a large military buildup in the region.

Democrats had argued that the resolution was necessary after the U.S. raid to capture Maduro and because Trump has stated plans to control the country’s oil industry for years to come.

Protesters rally in front of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, after the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a military operation. (AP Photo/Jessica Phelps)

The pushback has begun in the courts, too, as the families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a Trump administration boat strike filed what is thought to be the first wrongful-death case arising from the campaign. Three dozen strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean have killed at least 126 people since September.

The US takes steps to normalize ties while still issuing warnings

While keeping pressure on those the Trump administration dubs “narcotraffickers” without providing evidence, U.S. officials also are working to normalize ties with Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodríguez. Nonetheless, Rubio will make clear in his testimony that she has little choice but to comply with Trump’s demands.

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“Rodríguez is well aware of the fate of Maduro; it is our belief that her own self-interest aligns with advancing our key objectives,” Rubio will say, noting that they include opening Venezuela’s energy sector to U.S. companies, providing preferential access to production, using oil revenue to purchase American goods, and ending subsidized oil exports to Cuba.

Rodríguez, who previously served as Maduro’s vice president, on Tuesday said her government and the Trump administration “have established respectful and courteous channels of communication.” During televised remarks, Rodríguez said she is working with Trump and Rubio to set “a working agenda.”

So far, she has appeared to acquiesce to Trump’s demands and to release prisoners jailed by the government under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. On Monday, the head of a Venezuelan human rights group said 266 political prisoners had been freed since Jan. 8.

Trump had praised the releases, saying on social media that he would “like to thank the leadership of Venezuela for agreeing to this powerful humanitarian gesture!”

In a key step to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the State Department notified Congress just this week that it intends to begin sending additional diplomatic and support personnel to Caracas to prepare for the possible reopening of the U.S. Embassy there.

It was the first formal notice of the administration’s intent to reopen the embassy, which shuttered in 2019. Fully normalizing ties, however, would require the U.S. to revoke its decision recognizing the Venezuelan parliament elected in 2015 as the country’s legitimate government.

Rubio also planned to meet Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado later Wednesday at the State Department.

Machado went into hiding after Maduro was declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. She reemerged in December to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. After Maduro was ousted, she traveled to Washington. In a meeting with Trump, she presented him with her Peace Prize medal, an extraordinary gesture given that Trump has effectively sidelined her.

Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 28, the 28th day of 2026. There are 337 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 28, 2011, protesters opposed to Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule of Egypt seized the streets of Cairo, battling police, burning down ruling party headquarters and defying a military curfew. Hundreds of protesters would be killed in ensuing days in attempts to crush the uprising before Mubarak stepped down as president that February.

Also on this date:

In 1547, England’s King Henry VIII died at age 55; he was succeeded by his 9-year-old son, Edward VI.

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In 1813, the novel “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen was first published, anonymously, in London.

In 1922, 98 people were killed when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C., collapsed under the weight of nearly 2 feet of snow.

In 1956, Elvis Presley made his first national TV appearance on “Stage Show,” a CBS program hosted by Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

In 1980, six U.S. diplomats who had avoided being taken hostage at their embassy in Tehran flew out of Iran with the help of Canadian diplomats; the events were later dramatized in the film “Argo.”

In 1985, to raise funds in support of famine relief in Ethiopia, the supergroup USA For Africa recorded the song “We Are the World.”

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all seven crew members including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

In 2017, Serena Williams won her record 23rd Open Era Grand Slam singles title, defeating her sister Venus at the Australian Open for what would be her final major championship.

In 2024, three American troops were killed and 25 were injured in a drone strike in Jordan near the border with Syria. President Joe Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by the groups against American forces across the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Today’s birthdays:

Actor Alan Alda is 90.
Former NBA coach Gregg Popovich is 77.
Golf Hall of Famer Nick Price is 69.
Film director Frank Darabont is 67.
Singer Sarah McLachlan is 58.
Rapper Rakim is 58.
Humorist Mo Rocca is 57.
R&B singer Anthony Hamilton is 55.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is 54.
Rapper Rick Ross is 50.
Singer Joey Fatone Jr. (’N Sync) is 49.
Singer Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys) is 46.
Actor Elijah Wood is 45.
Rapper J. Cole is 41.
Actor Ariel Winter is 28.

Like Kaohly Her, St. Paul mayor,

This park breaks new ground.

So be a dear, search turf here

For garbage and trash abound.

Hunt clues will be released at about midnight at TwinCities.com/treasurehunt each day of the hunt.

See the Treasure Hunt rules.

Where has the medallion been discovered in past years?

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