Amazon to replace 600,000 jobs with robots, internal documents reveal

America’s second-largest employer has decided to shift towards automation shifting from human labor to robotics, the company documents reveal.

Amazon has played a significant role in shaping the American workforce by hiring “an army” of workers and contract drivers but now internal strategy documents seen by New York Times indicate a policy shift.

It has been revealed that Amazon is planning to replace nearly 600,000 jobs with robots.

The U.S.-based e-commerce giant’s workforce has tripled since 2018 and now is expected to hire nearly 160,000 more people in the United States by the end of 2027.

However, experts believe shifting to robots can make up for the workforce shortage and it will also save nearly 30 per cent on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.

The company is expecting exponential growth, aiming to deliver nearly double the products by 2033 and that would mean increasing their workforce by more than 600,000.

During an Amazon Board briefing last year, executives said that shifting to robot automation can help the company avoid hiring nearly half a million people. It has been revealed that the company aims to shift nearly 75 per cent of its operations to automation.

The documents didn’t use the terms like “AI” or “automation”, instead replacing them with “advanced technology” and also used “cobot” instead of “robot”. Cobot implies collaboration of robots with humans.