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Amazon today confirmed plans to lay off 14,000 people in corporate roles amid a continued push on AI, though more cuts could be in store for 2026.
The company is "reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets," Beth Galetti, head of HR at Amazon, wrote in a company-wide email that it also published online.
Galetti's memo comes after Reuters reported yesterday that Amazon planned to cut "as many as 30,000 corporate jobs." She didn't address that number, but said Amazon expects to find "additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficiency gains" next year. Reuters reports the cuts will primarily affect those in HR, devices, services, and operations.
Employees will hear today if they are affected. Amazon will offer "most employees 90 days to look for a new role internally." Those who cannot find a new role at Amazon will receive "transition support, including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits, and more," Galetti says.
Some are already posting about being laid off on social media. "After years of pouring my heart into this company and its people, it’s surreal to say that this chapter is now closed," a senior recruiter with Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios wrote on LinkedIn.
Usually this type of corporate cut would occur when a company is doing poorly, but Amazon had $18 billion in profit in the latest quarter, The New York Times reports. It's also increased spending on AI data centers. Amazon acknowledged this in its employee memo, citing its ambitions to move even faster in AI.
"Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well," Galetti wrote. "What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones)."
Amazon plans to "operate like the world's largest startup," she added, a phrase CEO Andy Jassy first used in a September 2024 memo to employees in which he also announced a "bureaucracy mailbox," where employees could forward examples of "where we might have bureaucracy or unnecessary process that’s crept in and we can root out."
Amazon also laid off approximately 27,000 people a few years ago. As of July, it had 1.55 million employees.
Last week, Meta cut 600 roles within its AI division, also citing the need to move faster, so even those who work in AI might not be safe in today's unpredictable tech climate.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Amazon would ramp up the use of automation in its warehouses in the coming years, which would allow it to hire about 600,000 fewer human employees. Amazon pushed back on that characterization, however, and pointed to the 250,000 seasonal jobs it will once again add for the holiday rush.