Amazon Joins Industry-Wide Job Purge With New Round of Corporate Cuts
Amazon is planning another large round of corporate job cuts that could begin as early as next week, according to Reuters.
The layoffs are part of Amazon’s larger effort to reduce its corporate workforce by about 30,000 employees. The company already cut around 14,000 corporate and office jobs in October, and the next round is expected to be a similar size, Reuters reported.
Amazon declined to comment on the report.
Which Parts of Amazon Are Affected
According to Reuters, the planned job cuts are expected to affect several major parts of Amazon’s business, including:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Retail and marketplace teams
- Prime Video
- Human Resources, known internally as People Experience and Technology
The exact number of jobs affected in each area has not been confirmed, and the final plans could still change. Most warehouse and delivery workers are not expected to be impacted, as the cuts focus on corporate roles.
Amazon employs about 1.58 million people worldwide, but corporate employees make up a much smaller share of that total. Once all planned layoffs are complete, the cuts would represent nearly 10% of Amazon’s corporate workforce.
Why Amazon Says It Is Cutting Jobs
When Amazon announced the first round of layoffs in October, the company said the decision was connected to the growing use of artificial intelligence. In an internal message, Amazon said new AI tools are allowing teams to work faster and operate more efficiently.
However, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy later explained that the job cuts were not mainly about money or AI.
During an earnings call, Jassy said the real issue was company culture. He explained that Amazon had added too many layers of management over time, which slowed decision-making and made the company less efficient.
“You end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers,” Jassy said.
Earlier in 2025, Jassy also said Amazon’s corporate workforce would likely continue shrinking as the company finds new ways to operate more efficiently, including through the use of AI.
AI Is Still Changing How Amazon Works
Even though Amazon says AI is not the main reason for the layoffs, it continues to invest heavily in the technology. Like many large companies, Amazon is using AI to:
- Help write and manage software code
- Automate routine office work
- Reduce manual tasks
Amazon highlighted its newest AI tools at its annual AWS cloud computing conference in December, showing how businesses can do more work with smaller teams.
What Happens to Affected Employees
Employees who were laid off in October were allowed to stay on Amazon’s payroll for 90 days. During that time, they could apply for other jobs inside the company or search for work elsewhere. Those 90 days are set to expire soon, just as the next round of layoffs is expected to begin.
If Amazon follows the same approach this time, affected workers may receive similar support.
The Big Picture
If Amazon completes all 30,000 planned layoffs, it would be the largest job cut in the company’s history, surpassing the roughly 27,000 jobs cut in 2022.
While the layoffs affect only a small portion of Amazon’s total workforce, they show how even the largest tech companies are rethinking how many corporate employees they need—and how work gets done—in a world shaped by automation and efficiency.
