It’s no secret that Amazon has been drastically altering its huge international workforce of roughly 1.5 million to higher compete within the tech and on-line retail industries.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy even stated in his annual letter to shareholders, which was unveiled in April, that he desires the corporate to “function just like the world’s largest startup.” To perform this purpose, he stated Amazon wants to finish duties at a sooner tempo and weed out paperwork from its office tradition.
To comply with this new initiative, Amazon has made vital adjustments to its workforce all year long, together with job cuts.
Timeline of Amazon’s 2025 workforce adjustments
- In January, Amazon ordered its company workforce to return to working in workplaces 5 days every week to spice up collaboration, brainstorming, and innovation.
- Additionally in January, Amazon laid off dozens of staff in its communications division.
- In Might, roughly 100 staff in Amazon’s units and providers unit, which develops units akin to Ring, Echo sensible audio system, and Alexa, have been laid off.
- By July, the net retail large had laid off a whole lot of employees in its cloud computing unit, Amazon Internet Companies (AWS).
- In August, Amazon’s podcast division Wondery pink-slipped about 100 staff.
Amazon has enacted one other spherical of layoffs.
Noah Berger/Getty Photos for Amazon Internet Companies
Amazon cuts hundreds of jobs in newest transfer
Now, Amazon has introduced one other spherical of layoffs proper earlier than the vacations, and this time, it’s huge.
The web retail large is giving 14,000 company staff the boot, impacting a number of departments.
The layoffs have been revealed in a memo to staff on Oct. 29. Within the electronic mail, Beth Galetti, senior vp of individuals expertise and expertise at Amazon, stated the layoffs are a part of the corporate’s purpose of “reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources” to higher serve its investments and clients.
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“We’re working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted, including offering most employees 90 days to look for a new role internally (the timing will vary some based on local laws), and our recruiting teams will prioritize internal candidates to help as many people as possible find new roles within Amazon,” stated Galetti.
“For our teammates who are unable to find a new role at Amazon or who choose not to look for one, we’ll offer them transition support including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits, and more.”
In response to a current report from Enterprise Insider, over 78% of the job roles impacted by Amazon’s layoffs have been held by managers. Greater than 80% of the workers labored in Amazon’s retail enterprise, in departments akin to human assets, e-commerce, and logistics.
Amazon staff who labored in funds, units, promoting, buyer conduct analytics, and Fireplace TV have been additionally impacted by the job cuts. Even staff in Amazon’s audiobook and podcast division, Audible, have been laid off.
Why Amazon is de facto shedding staff
Within the memo, Galetti stated that although Amazon is performing nicely, it’s conducting layoffs as a result of the world is “changing quickly” as a result of synthetic intelligence.
“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 (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” stated Galetti. “We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
The transfer from Amazon comes after it revealed throughout an earnings name in February that it plans to extend its capital expenditures (funds used to amass or improve the corporate’s mounted property) to $100 billion this yr, primarily pushed by AI investments.
In a memo despatched to staff in June, Jassy warned that AI will finally change jobs on the firm as a result of it’ll “automate a whole lot of duties that eat our time.”
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” said Jassy. “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.”
Americans are worried about AI replacing jobs
While Amazon and other companies across the country rely on AI to simplify operations, many employees nationwide are worried about this growing trend. A YouGov survey from last year found that more than one-third of U.S. workers are concerned that AI will result in job loss or fewer work hours.
Amid this anxiety, about 218 tech companies have reduced their workforces this year, resulting in over 112,700 employees losing their jobs, according to recent data from Layoffs.fyi.
More Labor:
- Intel quietly pulls back major employee commitment amid troubles
- Google quietly doubles down on a controversial workplace trend
- Samsung cracks down on an alarming workplace problem
A recent survey from Resume.org found that nearly three in 10 companies have replaced jobs with AI this year, and 37% expect to replace roles with AI by the end of 2026.
“AI adoption is going to reshape the job market more dramatically over the next 18 to 24 months than we’ve seen in decades,” said Kara Dennison, head of career advising at Resume.org, in the survey.
“We’ll see continued displacement of routine and process-driven roles as well as entirely new categories of work centered on AI oversight, data ethics, prompt engineering, and human-AI collaboration. Technical skills alone won’t be enough; adaptability, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence will become the defining differentiators for talent.”
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