Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that it has cut about 16,000 corporate jobs, bringing total layoffs to roughly 30,000 since October 2025, and signaled that more reductions could still be ahead.
The latest round follows reporting by Reuters last week that the company was preparing additional cuts as part of CEO Andy Jassy’s broader push to streamline operations, trim bureaucracy, and move away from businesses that are not meeting performance expectations.
In a related move, Amazon said Tuesday that it will shut down its remaining physical Fresh grocery stores and Go markets, effectively ending years of attempts to make those formats work. The company also said it is discontinuing Amazon One, its palm scanning biometric payment system, another high profile experiment it has decided to walk away from.
While roughly 30,000 layoffs account for only a small slice of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, most of whom work in warehouses and fulfillment centers, the cuts amount to nearly 10 percent of its corporate staff and mark the largest workforce reduction in the company’s three-decade history. The scale surpasses the roughly 27,000 jobs Amazon eliminated between late 2022 and early 2023.
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Amazon has framed the cuts as a necessary step to shore up the business. “Reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy” were central to the decision, the company’s top human resources executive, Beth Galetti, wrote in a post. Galetti also signaled that the restructuring may not be finished, noting that some teams will continue to “make adjustments as appropriate.”
The latest reductions represent the second major wave of layoffs in just three months. In October, Amazon eliminated about 14,000 roles, citing the growing use of artificial intelligence and worries about how the company’s corporate culture was evolving.
Executives have also pointed to aggressive hiring during the pandemic as a factor. As online shopping surged during COVID-19, Amazon expanded rapidly, a scale up the company now says it is working to correct.
“Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months,” as per Galetti in Wednesday’s note. “That’s not our plan,” she added.
The rollout of the layoffs was further jolted on Tuesday when some Amazon Web Services employees received an email that appeared to reference the plan under the internal name “Project Dawn,” a mistake that rattled thousands of workers.
While the company has not disclosed the full reach of the cuts, employees across multiple divisions said they were affected. Staff from AWS teams, the Alexa voice assistant group, Prime Video, devices, advertising, and last mile delivery reported impacts in internal messages and online posts.
Amazon began this phase of corporate reductions the same day it announced plans to shut its Fresh grocery stores and Go markets, but the company did not respond to requests for comment.
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The cuts also highlight how artificial intelligence is reshaping corporate workforces. As AI assistants become more capable, companies are increasingly using them for everything from basic administrative work to complex software development, accelerating adoption and reducing the need for some roles.
CEO Andy Jassy has previously warned that the growing reliance on artificial intelligence would bring greater automation across the company and, in turn, lead to fewer corporate roles. He raised that expectation publicly last summer as Amazon accelerated its use of AI driven tools.
The debate over AI’s impact on jobs has been playing out more broadly across corporate America. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos last week, executives said some roles would inevitably disappear even as new ones emerge. Two executives told Reuters that, in practice, AI is often being used as a convenient justification for cuts companies were already planning.
Amazon is far from alone. Major tech firms including Meta and Microsoft rapidly expanded their workforces during the pandemic boom and have since moved into restructuring mode. Outside of big tech, companies such as UPS, Pinterest, and chip equipment maker ASML have also announced job cuts in recent days, underscoring how widespread the pullback has become.