Chief Executive Bob Nardelli made the announcement in a memo to all 355,000 Home Depot employees in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The company has 5,400 people working at its Atlanta headquarters, meaning the cuts represent about 5.5 percent of the workforce there.

Nardelli said the decision relates to the company's recently announced plan to invest another $350 million in the second half of this year to improve the experience of customers at its 2087 stores. The effort aims to increase the availability of staff, add customer service call boxes in some stores and install self-checkout terminals in all stores.

Nardellin said most of the affected employees will continue to work for up to two weeks, and all affected employees will be paid for the next two months. He said some of the employees could be placed in jobs in other parts of the company. He did not say which positions would be cut.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)