Amazon is preparing to eliminate as many as 30,000 corporate roles beginning Tuesday, October 28, in what would be the company’s largest white-collar reduction to date, surpassing the 27,000 positions cut across 2022 and 2023. The cuts are expected to land heavily in human resources, devices and services, and operations, part of a broader push to streamline management layers and pare costs. Reuters first reported the targeted total, while an earlier industry report framed the move as the company’s biggest corporate layoff yet.
People familiar with the plan said the reductions will affect roughly a tenth of Amazon’s global office workforce, though the share is far smaller against the company’s overall headcount of more than 1.5 million. Shares edged higher in early trading following the reports. Internally, leaders have emphasized simplifying processes and shifting resources to areas tied to automation and new customer experiences, according to briefings described by employees.
Chief Executive Andy Jassy has signaled for months that advances in generative AI and software “agents” would allow Amazon to run leaner in some corporate functions while creating roles in AI infrastructure and products. The company has simultaneously invested tens of billions of dollars in data centers and chip partnerships to support AI workloads, and has said it is expanding training for employees to work with the technology. Labor advocates, meanwhile, have argued that successive job cuts concentrate risk on staff while gains accrue to shareholders, a debate likely to intensify as automation tools scale.
The latest reductions follow a steady drumbeat of smaller cuts across business units this year, including in AWS and in communications and devices teams, even as the cloud division posts double-digit sales growth. Seasonal hiring for fulfillment centers is still underway ahead of the holidays, underscoring the divergence between Amazon’s hourly logistics workforce and its corporate ranks. With notifications expected to roll out in waves, the company is poised to join other tech firms that have trimmed white-collar staff while pouring capital into AI and cloud capacity.
