Amazon is planning to eliminate sweeping job cuts beginning Tuesday, according to Reuters reports.
The e-commerce giant has announced a decision to cut up to 30,000 positions, about 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees, though they represent a small fraction of its total 1.55 million global workforce.
Amazon has been working to pare expenses after a big hiring surge during the pandemic to a peak in demand. The layoffs will affect employees across divisions, including logistics and Human Resources.
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This follows previous reductions totaling around 27,000 jobs in 2022-2023 and is attributed to cost-cutting measures, over-hiring during the pandemic, and investments in AI and automation.
Amazon has been reducing its headcount through smaller, targeted rounds of layoffs this year, as CEO Andy Jassy had earlier stated on the need to curtail costs and reduce bureaucracy/middle management layers. He also warned that generative AI will likely lead to a smaller workforce.
Part of Jassy’s internal memo says,
“We’re using Generative AI broadly across our internal operations. In our fulfillment network, we’re using AI to improve inventory placement, demand forecasting, and the efficiency of our robots—all of which have improved cost to serve and delivery speed. We’ve rebuilt our Customer Service Chatbot with GenAI, providing an even better experience than we’d had before. And, we’re assembling more intelligent and compelling product detail pages by leveraging GenAI.
“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
He further urged employees to “be curious about AI, attend workshops, take trainings, and experiment with AI whenever they can. Jassy believes that agentic AI is going to change the scope and speed at which the company can innovate for customers.
The company last week unveiled a new artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant called “Help Me Decide,” designed to make product selection easier for customers who struggle to choose between similar items. The new tool leverages AI to deliver personalized product recommendations based on each shopper’s browsing history, searches, and past purchases.
Amazon reportedly has over 1,000 generative-AI services and applications in progress or already built. The e-commerce giant has disclosed plans to make it much easier to build agents and then build (or partner) on several new agents across all of our business units and G&A areas.
The recent planned layoffs at the company would also represent the biggest job cuts across the tech industry since at least 2020, according to Layoffs. fyi. As of Monday, more than 200 tech companies have laid off approximately 98,000 employees since the start of the year, according to the site, which monitors job cuts in the tech sector.
Microsoft has laid off about 15,000 people so far this year, while Meta last week eliminated roughly 600 jobs within its artificial intelligence unit. Google cut more than 100 design-related roles in its cloud unit earlier this month, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in September the company laid off 4,000 customer support staffers, pointing to its increasing AI adoption as a catalyst behind the cuts. Intel’s cuts this year totaled 22,000 jobs, the most of any listed by Layoffs. fyi.
Notably, this round of layoffs across companies reflects a broader trend in tech and business, where companies are adopting AI/automation more aggressively, which is leading to a rethinking of hiring, roles, and structure. For employees, particularly white-collar workers in roles that can be automated or streamlined by AI agents, there may be increased pressure to upskill, shift into new responsibilities, or face role redundancy.
From a business perspective, for companies, this aligns with large investments in AI infrastructure and a desire to operate with lean teams, faster cycles, and overall greater efficiency.