Amazon to Cut 14,000 Jobs as Jassy Looks to Ease Bureaucracy

Amazon.com Inc. plans to eliminate roughly 14,000 corporate jobs just months after Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy warned that AI will shrink the company’s workforce.

The downsizing marks Amazon’s second round of reductions in recent years. Besides his ongoing war on bureaucracy, Jassy signaled in June that the company’s staff count would likely fall as it increases its use of artificial intelligence to complete tasks normally handled by people. The layoffs are hitting a wide swath of the company, from logistics and payments to video games and the cloud-computing unit, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets,” Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, said Tuesday in a blog post.

Galetti signaled more layoffs are coming, saying Amazon would hire in key areas in 2026, but also find “additional places we can remove layers.” The last round of companywide cuts three years ago arrived in waves over five months. They began in the fall after the conclusion of Amazon’s annual planning process, with subsequent rounds in January — after the holiday shopping rush — and March.

Reuters reported earlier that as many as 30,000 people would lose their jobs. Terminations on that scale would surpass the rolling reductions in late 2022 and early 2023 that ultimately ensnared more than 27,000 corporate employees, as Jassy looked to reduce costs after a pandemic-era boom. Since then, there has been a steady drip of more modest layoffs targeting individual teams.

It was business as usual on Tuesday morning outside Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle. Rain drizzled, and a dog park beside the plant-filled Amazon spheres was empty. White vans that shuttle employees between offices pulled in and out. A coffee vendor said customer traffic was a little light and that only one client mentioned the layoffs.

One worker, who requested anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak with the media, said he spent the night monitoring a Reddit thread about Amazon layoffs. He got nervous when a software development engineer with more experience announced on the forum that he was among those let go, but he ended up surviving Tuesday’s cuts. Still, the employee said he was fretting about further firings and what he considered a worrisome title of Galetti’s message: “Staying nimble.”

A laid-off worker said he received a different message from Galetti before 6 a.m. New York time with the subject line: “Update Regarding Your Role at Amazon.” The email said his job was being eliminated and that he should watch for an invitation for a video call with a human resources representative who could address any questions.

While Amazon employed a total of about 1.55 million people as of June 30, most of them work in warehouses. The corporate workforce comprises about 350,000 personnel, meaning the 14,000 cuts announced Tuesday represent about 4% of that headcount.

Amazon is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Thursday. The shares rose 1% to $229.25 in New York.

Jassy has repeatedly said he’s determined to cut management layers and ease bureaucracy that began afflicting Amazon after a pandemic-era hiring binge. His comments in June that the company must also use AI to automate more of its operations touched off panic among workers, already roiled by ongoing efforts to reduce management layers.

Signs of corporate belt-tightening emerged not long after that. Amazon set more aggressive attrition targets over the summer and didn’t fill vacant positions in its corporate logistics and advertising operations, according to people familiar with the matter.

When the company announced the 14,000 job cuts on Tuesday, employees began gathering in social media chat rooms, swapping notes about which departments suffered losses and what kind of messages employees would receive indicating they are about to get laid off. They exchanged advice, such as retrieving personal files from work computers before their access gets terminated, and sought tips about companies that are hiring.