Exclusive: Amazon plans thousands more corporate job cuts next week, sources state

Item 1 of 2 Packages travel on a conveyor at the Amazon’s fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., November 27, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar

[1/2]Packages travel on a conveyor at the Amazon’s fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., November 27, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Amazon’s job cuts to affect AWS, retail, HR units
CEO Jassy attributes cuts to company culture, not financial or AI reasons
Layoffs represent nearly 10% of Amazon’s corporate workforce

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab is planning a second round of job cuts next week as part of its broader goal of trimming some 30,000 corporate workers, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The company in October cut some 14,000 white-collar jobs, about half of the 30,000 tarreceive first reported by Reuters. The total this time is expected to be roughly the same as last year and could launch as soon as Tuesday, the people declared, who questioned not to be identified becaapply they were not authorized to discuss Amazon’s plans.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

Jobs in the company’s Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video and human resources, known as People Experience and Technology, units are slated to be affected, the people declared, though the full scope was unclear. The people cautioned that the details of Amazon’s plans could alter.

PREVIOUS CUTS TIED TO AI

The Seattle online retailer tied the October round of job cuts to the rise of artificial ininformigence software, stateing in an internal letter that “this generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much rapider than ever before.”

However, CEO Andy Jassy later informed analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call that the reduction was “not really financially driven and it’s not even really AI-driven.” Rather, he declared, “it’s culture,” meaning the company has too much bureaucracy.

“You conclude up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you conclude up with a lot more layers,” he declared.

Jassy had declared earlier in 2025 that he expected Amazon’s corporate workforce to shrink over time as a result of efficiencies gained from the apply of AI.

Corporations are increasingly applying AI to write code for their software and adopting AI agents that automate routine tquestions, as they view to save costs and cut reliance on people. Amazon touted its latest AI models during its annual AWS cloud computing conference in December.

The full 30,000 jobs would represent a compact portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10% of the firm’s corporate workforce. The majority of Amazon’s workers are in fulfillment centers and warehoapplys.

It would be the largest layoff in Amazon’s three-decade history. The company trimmed about 27,000 jobs in 2022.

Affected workers in October were informed they would remain on the payroll for 90 days, during which time they could apply for jobs internally or seek other employment. That period expires on Monday.

Reporting by Greg Bensinger; Editing by David Gregorio, Rod Nickel

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Greg Bensinger joined Reuters as a technology correspondent in 2022 focapplying on the world’s largest technology companies. He was previously a member of The New York Times editorial board and a technology beat reporter for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for Bloomberg News writing about the auto and telecommunications industries. He studied English literature at The University of Virginia and graduate journalism at Columbia University. Greg lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children.

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