Reports: Amazon’s latest layoffs could begin next week

Amazon is preparing for another round of corporate job cuts next week, according to a report from Reuters on Thursday. Bloomberg also reported that layoffs could begin next week. We reached out to Amazon for comment.

Amazon laid off about 14,000 workers globally in October. The company indicated that more layoffs could occur in 2026.

Reuters reported that the latest cuts will be “roughly the same as last year.” The overall number of cuts could be the largest in Amazon’s history, exceeding the 27,000 positions that the company eliminated in 2023 across multiple rounds of layoffs.

In a memo to employees sent in October, Amazon human resources chief Beth Galetti wrote that the company was “shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.”

She added: “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.”

There was speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Amazon and other tech giants including Microsoft have trimmed headcount while investing heavily in AI infrastructure. And software development engineers made up the largest group of employees affected by the layoffs in Washington state last year, amid the rise of AI coding tools.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also told employees in June that he expected Amazon’s total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI.

But on the company’s earnings call with analysts, two days after the layoff announcement in October, Jassy said the cuts weren’t triggered by financial strain or artificial intelligence replacing workers. Instead, he framed it as a push to stay nimble, and said Amazon’s rapid growth over the past decade led to extra layers of management that slowed decision-making.

Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos as CEO in mid-2021, has pushed to reduce management layers and eliminate bureaucracy inside the company. Amazon’s corporate headcount tripled between 2017 and 2022, according to The Information, before the company adopted a more cautious hiring approach.

Amazon’s corporate workforce numbered around 350,000 people in early 2023, the last time the company provided a public number. At that scale, the reduction of 30,000 represents about 8.5% of Amazon’s corporate workforce. However, the number is a much smaller fraction of its overall workforce of 1.57 million people, which includes workers in its warehouses.

The company employs around 50,000 corporate workers in the Seattle region, its primary headquarters. There were 2,303 corporate employees in Washington state that were laid off last year in October.

Amazon reports its latest quarterly earnings on Feb. 5. The company’s stock underperformed relative to the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants last year. Some analysts predict that Amazon’s cloud unit will help boost the stock amid the ongoing AI boom.