Amazon set to lay off nearly 16,000 employees as early as next week

Amazon

• Amazon plans to lay off about 16,000 corporate employees next week
• This marks the second major round of cuts, totaling nearly 30,000 jobs this year
• Amazon layoffs aim to streamline operations and redefine internal roles.

Did our AI summary help?

Amazon is preparing for another major round of layoffs, with close to 16,000 corporate employees expected to lose their jobs as early as next week, according to Business Insider. If the plan goes ahead, it would mark the company’s second large wave of job cuts in just a few months, deepening uncertainty for thousands of workers across its global operations.

The upcoming layoffs are expected to be similar in scale to those announced in October, when Amazon cut around 14,000 corporate roles. Together, the two rounds would take the total number of eliminated jobs to nearly 30,000, making this one of the biggest workforce reductions in the company’s history. While Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, its corporate workforce is much smaller, at roughly 350,000 employees, meaning the impact of these cuts will be strongly felt within office-based teams.

The fresh layoffs underline Amazon’s ongoing push to streamline its operations and rethink how the company functions internally. In October, Amazon initially linked the job cuts to changes driven by artificial intelligence and automation. However, CEO Andy Jassy later clarified that the layoffs were not about cost savings or AI replacing jobs. Instead, he said the decisions were tied to questions around cultural fit and whether certain roles aligned with the company’s evolving expectations and work culture.

This explanation has sparked debate among employees and industry observers, especially at a time when many tech companies are re-evaluating their structures after years of rapid hiring. For Amazon workers, the lack of clarity around which teams will be affected and how decisions are being made has added to anxiety inside the organisation.

So far, Amazon has not officially commented on the latest round of cuts. A company spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment, leaving employees and investors to rely on reports from people close to the situation. Reuters had earlier reported that the new layoffs could begin as soon as next week, a timeline that now appears increasingly likely.

The news comes as the broader tech industry continues to grapple with slowing growth, pressure from investors to improve efficiency, and a shift away from the aggressive expansion seen during the pandemic years. For Amazon, which has long been seen as a stable employer despite its demanding work culture, the scale and speed of these layoffs signal a deeper reset underway.

As employees brace for the coming week, questions remain about how Amazon plans to rebuild trust internally and what its workforce will look like after this latest round of cuts.