Amazon to lay off over 30,000 corporate roles starting today, says report

Amazon is reportedly preparing to eliminate up to 30,000 corporate positions starting Tuesday, 28 October, marking its largest workforce reduction since 2022, according to a Reuters report citing individuals familiar with the matter.

This would mark Amazon's largest job cut since late 2022, when it started to eliminate around 27,000 positions.

Cost-cutting drive follows Covid-19 pandemic-era over-hiring for Amazon

The move is part of Amazon’s broader cost-cutting strategy as it seeks to streamline operations and recalibrate after the Covid-19 pandemic-era over-hiring, when surging online demand prompted aggressive expansion across divisions.

While the planned redundancies account for only a fraction of Amazon’s 1.55 million global workforce, they represent nearly 10% of its 3,50,000 corporate employees.

The cuts underscore a shift in focus from rapid growth to sustained profitability, as the e-commerce giant navigates a more cautious economic climate and slower consumer spending trends.

Largest job cuts since 2022 as economic headwinds persist

Amazon last executed major layoffs in late 2022, eliminating approximately 27,000 roles across its business units.

Earlier this month, Fortune reported that Amazon is preparing to cut as much as 15% of its human resources staff, with additional layoffs likely in other divisions.

Amazon’s human resources division—known internally as PXT or the People eXperience Technology team—will be hard-hit, but other areas of its core consumer business are also likely to be affected.

Amazon declines comment as managers undergo layoff training

Amazon has declined to comment publicly on the planned layoffs despite multiple media requests. According to Reuters, the company directed managers of affected teams to undergo communication training on Monday in preparation for staff notifications, which are expected to begin via email on Tuesday morning.

CEO Andy Jassy doubles down on efficiency, AI transformation

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy already oversaw the largest layoffs in the company's history from late 2022 into 2023, when the company cut at least 27,000 corporate jobs, which accounted for a high-single-digit percentage of the company’s office jobs. Many other Big Tech companies also slashed their headcounts around that time as the pandemic receded and consumer demand trends changed.

Now, many employers are looking to harness the power of AI—initially for mundane and repetitive tasks and eventually for more complicated jobs—to reduce the need to maintain the same level of human staff on their payrolls.

AI adoption to reshape Amazon’s future workforce

Andy Jassy himself is one of those employers. The CEO fired a warning to his employees in June, when he encouraged them to welcome this new AI-powered era.

“Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company,” he wrote in a companywide email, also published on Amazon’s corporate blog.

At the same time, Jassy also said there won’t be room on the bus for everyone: “We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

Andy Jassy – ‘a cost-cutter’?

Since succeeding Jeff Bezos as CEO in 2021, Jassy has built a reputation as a cost-cutter and operational reformer. Amazon managers are routinely required to meet targets for ‘unregretted attrition’ (URA), a measure indicating the percentage of staff the company can afford to lose through voluntary departures, managed exits, or layoffs.

However, people familiar with developments told Fortune that the latest wave of cuts is being treated differently within the company, signalling a broader restructuring effort rather than a routine trimming of underperforming staff.