Amazon lays off 14,000 company employees, major job losses

Amazon is laying off approximately 14,000 corporate employees, the company announced in a press release blog post on Tuesday. It marks one of the largest job losses in the company’s corporate history.

According to the post, Amazon is offering various relief measures and severance packages to company employees affected by the layoffs. Most employees have 90 days to look for a new position within Amazon, during which time their pay and benefits will continue. Those who do not secure another position internally during this notice period will receive transition support, including severance payments and health insurance benefits.

The layoffs are part of an ongoing effort to streamline bureaucracy and refocus resources on high-growth areas, especially AI initiatives. Amazon is making significant investments in AI infrastructure, and capital expenditures are also expected more than $120 billion for the year, almost 50% more than last year.

Amazon belongs to the world second largest private employer, with approx 1.5 million people working for the company, mainly in warehouse positions. Of the entire global workforce about 350,000 its company employees; that means the recent plan to cut 14,000 corporate jobs affects about 4% of Amazon’s workforce.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned in June that AI would cause the company to reduce its workforce. In a memo to employees, Jassy wrote that Amazon “needs fewer people for some of the jobs being done today, and more people for other types of jobs.”

He wrote that he expects Amazon to reduce its overall workforce in the coming years as a result of AI, and that employees will need to learn to use AI tools and accomplish more with fewer team members.

Amazon is carrying out the layoffs to make the company leaner and less bureaucratic, even though the e-commerce giant is on good financial footing. According to his second quarter earnings reportpublished on July 31, Amazon posted net income of $18.2 billion for the second quarter of the year, an increase of 35% compared to the same period last year. This performance was accompanied by revenues of $167.7 billion, up 13% year over year, and operating income of $19.2 billion, up 31% from Q2 2024.

Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, Beth Galetti, explained why the company is reducing the number of features despite its solid performance. According to Galetti, AI ensures that Amazon can innovate faster. Amazon needs to “become more organized” and reduce the number of layers in its organization to “move as quickly as possible,” she wrote.

“What we need to remember is that the world is changing rapidly,” Galetti wrote in the blog post. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and entirely new ones). We believe we need to be leaner, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and businesses.”

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The last major layoffs at Amazon occurred between late 2022 and early 2023, when the company phased out layoffs 27,000 employeesanother major round of job cuts.

Other tech companies have also made layoffs recently. Meta cut 600 positions from its Superintelligence Labs AI team last week, while Microsoft laid off more than 15,000 employees in May and July.

Amazon will announce its third-quarter results after the market closes on Thursday. The company is the fifth most valuable in the world, with a market capitalization of $2.4 trillion at the time of writing.

Related: Amazon wants to replace 600,000 future workers with robots, according to leaked documents

Amazon is laying off approximately 14,000 corporate employees, the company announced in a press release blog post on Tuesday. It marks one of the largest job losses in the company’s corporate history.

According to the post, Amazon is offering various relief measures and severance packages to company employees affected by the layoffs. Most employees have 90 days to look for a new position within Amazon, during which time their pay and benefits will continue. Those who do not secure another position internally during this notice period will receive transition support, including severance payments and health insurance benefits.