Amazon is cutting 16,000 corporate jobs in the second round of mass layoffs in three months, the company announced Wednesday. The cuts represent Amazon’s biggest layoff since 2023, when it cut 27,000 workers. CEO Andy Jassy is pushing to reduce organizational layers and use artificial intelligence to replace some workers. U.S.-based employees have 90 days to find new positions internally or will receive severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits.
The announcement comes as Amazon reported strong financial results, with profit jumping nearly 40% to about $21 billion in the most recent quarter. Yet it reflects a broader shift in corporate hiring, where companies including UPS and Pinterest are cutting staff even as the labor market remains weak, adding just 50,000 jobs in December.
The layoffs follow a round in October, when Amazon said it was laying off 14,000 workers. While some Amazon units completed those cuts in October, others did not finish until now, according to Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, in a blog post Wednesday.
Galetti said the company has been “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” She said the company did not specify which business units would be impacted or where the job cuts would occur.
“While we’re making these changes, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,” Galetti said.
Jassy, who has aggressively cut costs since succeeding founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, said in June that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in coming years. Late last year, he attributed the layoffs to culture rather than financial pressure.
“It’s culture,” Jassy said in October. “And if you grow as fast as we did for several years, the size of businesses, the number of people, the number of locations, the types of businesses you’re in, you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers.”
Amazon and other Big Tech and retail companies have cut thousands of jobs over the past year to bring spending back in line following the COVID-19 pandemic, when Amazon’s workforce doubled as millions stayed home and boosted online spending.
The Unequal Impact
Several economic studies have predicted that higher-paying jobs in computer work and engineering are among the most susceptible to being transformed by generative AI systems that can help write code. But research last week by the Brookings Institution showed that workers in technology roles are more likely to have the education, skills and savings that enable them to more easily transfer into another job.
The same study shows there are millions of workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work. About 86% are women, they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers.
Beyond Amazon
The layoffs extend beyond Amazon. UPS announced plans to cut up to 30,000 operational jobs through attrition and buyouts this year as the package delivery company reduces the number of shipments from what was its largest customer, Amazon. That followed 34,000 job cuts in October at UPS and the closing of daily operations at 93 leased and owned buildings during the first nine months of last year. The same day, Pinterest announced plans to lay off under 15% of its workforce as part of broader restructuring that includes more investment in artificial intelligence.
Hiring across the U.S. has stagnated in recent months. The country added 50,000 jobs in December, according to labor data, a figure nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised November figure of 56,000. Economists have described the labor situation as a “no hire-no fire” environment, with many companies citing uncertainty from President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, elevated inflation and the spread of artificial intelligence.
Amazon shares fell $2.47, or a little more than 1%, in late afternoon trading Wednesday.