Kristina Roberts
Amazon, one of the world’s largest technology companies, is preparing for one of its biggest rounds of job cuts in recent years. According to reports, the company plans to remove as many as 30,000 corporate positions, beginning this Tuesday. The decision comes as part of Amazon’s effort to reduce unnecessary costs and reorganize its structure after a period of rapid hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although this number may sound huge, it represents only a small fraction of Amazon’s total global workforce of 1.55 million employees. However, for corporate workers—who number around 350,000—this reduction accounts for nearly 10% of them. This move will be Amazon’s largest set of layoffs since late 2022, when the company cut around 27,000 jobs. At that time, Amazon explained that it had hired too many workers during the pandemic, when online shopping demand was at its highest.
An Amazon spokesperson did not comment on the new layoffs, but reports suggest that the cuts will reach several departments, including human resources, operations, devices, services, and even Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is the company’s cloud computing division. Human resources at Amazon is known internally as the “People Experience and Technology” or PXT department.
Managers of the affected teams were reportedly told to attend special training on Monday. These sessions were designed to prepare them for difficult conversations with employees, as official email notices were expected to go out starting Tuesday morning. This shows that Amazon wants the process to be handled carefully, even though it is a challenging time for many.
The company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, has been very focused on reducing what he calls “excess bureaucracy.” He believes that Amazon has too many layers of management that slow down decision-making. To fix this, Jassy started an anonymous complaint system where employees could report inefficiencies in their departments. According to Jassy, the system has received about 1,500 responses, leading to more than 450 changes in how the company operates. These actions are part of his larger mission to make Amazon more efficient and adaptable to new technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI).
Earlier this year, Jassy also mentioned that using AI tools more widely across Amazon could lead to further job reductions. He said that automation would handle many repetitive and routine tasks that people currently do. As eMarketer analyst Sky Canaves explained, “This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force.” Canaves added that Amazon is under short-term pressure to balance the large investments it has made in developing its AI infrastructure with cost-cutting in other areas.
The total number of layoffs may still change depending on Amazon’s financial goals in the coming months. Some reports have suggested that the human resources department alone could face cuts of around 15%. Fortune magazine first shared that detail earlier this week.
Another reason behind the large number of cuts may be related to Amazon’s new work-from-office policy. At the start of this year, the company asked corporate employees to return to the office five days a week. This strict policy, one of the toughest among major technology companies, was meant to encourage collaboration. However, insiders said it didn’t cause enough employees to leave voluntarily, as Amazon may have expected. Some workers who failed to swipe into the office regularly, either because they lived far away or for personal reasons, were told that they had “voluntarily resigned.” This means they were dismissed without receiving severance pay, which also helped the company save money.
According to the website Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job losses in the technology industry, more than 98,000 tech workers have lost their jobs this year across 216 companies. In 2024, that number had reached about 153,000. Clearly, the trend of major layoffs is continuing in 2025, as companies adjust to new technologies like AI and changing economic conditions.
Amazon’s most profitable division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has been facing increasing competition. In the second quarter, AWS reported $30.9 billion in sales—a growth of 17.5%. However, this was much lower compared to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, which grew by 39%, and Google Cloud, which increased by 32%. Estimates for the third quarter suggest AWS will see around $32 billion in sales, showing only a small improvement from last year’s 19% increase. The unit has also been recovering from a major 15-hour internet outage last week, which affected many popular apps and services, including Snapchat and Venmo.
Despite these challenges, Amazon seems confident about the upcoming holiday shopping season. The company plans to hire around 250,000 temporary workers to handle warehouse and delivery demands—similar to what it did in previous years. These seasonal jobs are different from corporate roles and help Amazon manage the surge in online orders during November and December.
In another internal change, Amazon recently reorganized a part of its PXT division that focuses on diversity and inclusion efforts. According to a company memo, the restructuring involved promoting several employees to new positions rather than removing them. This suggests that Amazon is still trying to support certain company values even while making big cost cuts in other areas.
As of Monday, Amazon’s stock price rose by 1.2% to $226.97. Investors seem to view these layoffs and reorganizations as a sign that Amazon is serious about tightening its operations and improving efficiency, especially with the help of AI. The company is expected to release its third-quarter earnings on Thursday, which will give a clearer picture of how these strategies are affecting its profits.
The world will be watching closely to see how Amazon’s decisions play out. Many employees are worried about job security, while others hope these changes will make the company stronger in the long run. Technology experts believe that automation will continue to reshape the way companies work, and Amazon’s latest move is just one example of how businesses are adapting.
