Amazon announced Wednesday that it plans to cut about 16,000 corporate jobs, marking the second mass layoff since October last year.
The company wrote in a blog post that the layoffs are part of its ongoing efforts to “strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership and eliminating bureaucracy.” This coincides with a push for significant investment in artificial intelligence.
The layoffs come just months after Amazon laid off 14,000 employees across its corporate workforce in October. At the time, the company indicated that the cuts would continue into 2026 as it found “additional locations where layers can be removed.”
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, did not rule out further layoffs in the future, but said the company is not trying to create a “new rhythm” of large-scale layoffs every few months.
“That is not our plan,” Galetti wrote in a blog post. “However, as always, each team will continue to evaluate ownership, speed, and ability to invent for our customers and make adjustments as needed.”
On Tuesday, some employees in Amazon’s cloud division received an email apparently sent in error acknowledging an “organizational change” at the company. The memo referenced Galetti’s post and said Amazon had notified “colleagues within the affected organization.”
Amazon had approximately 1.58 million employees as of the end of the third quarter. This figure is primarily made up of warehouse and logistics employees.
The 30,000 job cuts since October represent about 10% of the company’s approximately 350,000 corporate and technology employees.
Amazon has been in the midst of a major downsizing in recent years. The company laid off more than 27,000 employees between 2022 and 2023, with smaller cuts across various organizations in 2024.
CEO Andy Jassy has been considering cutting staff to meet a surge in demand for e-commerce and cloud computing services after Amazon hired heavily during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Jassy was also looking to reset Amazon’s corporate culture so that it could run like “the world’s largest startup.” He set internal goals to reduce layers of management and established “bureaucracy-free email aliases” to identify ways the company could innovate faster.
Amazon is also working to reduce costs across its operations in order to increase investment in AI and rapidly building out data centers. Earlier this week, the company closed its Fresh and Go grocery chains after years of experimentation.
Amazon announced last October that it expected capital spending to reach $125 billion in 2026, the highest spending forecast among mega-cap companies.
Jassy said last June that Amazon’s workforce will likely decline over the next few years due to efficiency gains from AI.
“There will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that are currently being done, and more people will be doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said at the time.
