The yellow-shouldered amazon was described and illustrated in 1738 by the English naturalist Eleazar Albin in his A Natural History of Birds based on live specimen.

[3] Using Albin's account, both Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 and John Latham in 1781 included a description of the parrot in their books on birds.

[4][5] When in 1788 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, he included the yellow-shouldered amazon, coined the binomial name Psittacus barbadensis and cited Latham's work.

[7] The yellow-shouldered amazon is now placed with around thirty other species in the genus Amazona that was introduced by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830.

[8][9] The genus name is a Latinized version of the name Amazone given to these parrot in the 18th century by the Comte de Buffon, who believed they were native to Amazonian jungles.

On the Venezuelan island of Margarita, it is extirpated from the east side, which is heavily commercialized and a popular tourist destination, existing only on the Macanao Peninsula.

[20] Due to ongoing habitat lost, small population size, limited range and overhunting for the pet trade, the yellow-shouldered amazon is evaluated as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

[21] On La Blanquilla, the main issues are predation by feral cats and hunting by local fishermen and Naval personnel.