Amazon to cut up to 30,000 (and maybe 500k more) jobs as automation and AI take over

Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday, as the company pares expenses and compensates for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon's 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would mark Amazon's largest job cut since late 2022, when it started to eliminate around 27,000 positions. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

Amazon has been trimming smaller numbers of jobs over the past two years across multiple divisions, including devices, communications, and podcasting. The cuts beginning this week may affect a variety of divisions, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology or PXT; operations, devices and services; and Amazon Web Services, the people said.

Managers of impacted teams were asked to undergo training on Monday on how to communicate with staff following email notifications that will start going out on Tuesday morning, the people said.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is undertaking an initiative to reduce what he has described as an excess of bureaucracy, including by reducing the number of managers. He installed an anonymous complaint line for identifying inefficiencies that has elicited some 1,500 responses and over 450 process changes, he said earlier this year.

Jassy said in June that the increased use of artificial intelligence tools would likely lead to further job cuts, particularly through automating repetitive and routine tasks.

Last week, the New York Times revealed that, based on Amazon’s internal strategy documents, the company is not slowing down when it comes to automation. It is supposedly developing plans that could help avoid hiring more than half a million US workers by 2033, of which 160K would be avoided by 2027.

Although difficult for employees, this strategy is set to save Amazon about $12.6 billion between 2025 and 2027.

"This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force," said Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst.

"Amazon has also been under pressure in the short-term to offset the long-term investments in building out its AI infrastructure."

Sources told The New York Times that Amazon is being picky about the words it uses to present its AI plans for future employment. Instead of using terms such as AI automation, the company is reported to explore softer terms such as “advanced technology” and “cobots.” In addition, this should benefit Amazon’s long-standing goal of maintaining the image of a “good corporate citizen.”

The full scope of this round of job cuts was not immediately clear. The people familiar with the matter said the number could change over time as Amazon's financial priorities shift. Fortune earlier reported that the human resources division could be targeted with a cut of roughly 15%.

A program begun early this year to bring employees back in the office five days per week, among tech's most stringent, has failed to generate sufficient attrition, said two of the people, citing that as another reason for the size of the layoff. Some of the employees who are not swiping in daily because they live far from corporate offices, or for other reasons, are being told they have voluntarily quit Amazon and must leave without severance, a savings for the company.

Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking tech job cuts, estimated that about 98,000 jobs have been lost so far this year among 216 companies. For all of 2024, the figure was 153,000.

Amazon's largest profit center, cloud computing unit AWS, reported second-quarter sales of $30.9 billion, a 17.5% increase that was well below gains of 39% for Microsoft's Azure and of 32% for Alphabet's Google Cloud.

Estimates indicate that AWS will have boosted third-quarter sales by about 18% to $32 billion, a slight slowdown from last year's 19% increase. AWS is still reeling from a roughly 15-hour internet outage last week that felled many of the most popular online services, like Snapchat and Venmo.

Amazon appears to be expecting another big holiday selling season. It plans to offer 250,000 seasonal jobs to help staff warehouses, among other needs, the same as in the prior two years.

Amazon on Friday also announced a reorganization of a segment of its PXT unit focused on diversity initiatives, a memo reviewed by Reuters showed. The changes largely involved promoting people to new roles.

Amazon shares rose 1.2% to $226.97 on Monday. The company plans to report third-quarter earnings on Thursday.

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