Amazon reportedly to lay off up to 30,000 corporate employees
Media reports indicate Amazon will downsize its corporate workforce starting as early as Tuesday, Oct. 28.
The online giant seeks to reduce expenses and rectify excessive increases in staffing levels it made during the COVID-19 pandemic by cutting as many as 30,000 corporate employees, according to Reuters. Three people familiar with the matter told Reuters that managers of employees who would be laid off were asked on Monday, Oct. 27 to participate in training exercises on communicating with affected staffers after they receive email notifications of their roles being cut, which are scheduled to start going out the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 28.
These layoffs would represent close to 10% of Amazon’s roughly 350,000-person corporate workforce. Departments at Amazon that would see roles reduced reportedly include HR, technology, devices and services, and operations. Amazon declined a Reuters request for comment.
Reports of corporate layoffs follow recent media coverage of Amazon expecting that increasing usage of robots could enable to it replace more than 500,000 U.S. human employees and avoid having to bring on another 160,000 workers by 2027. Amazon has publicly denied those reports.
[READ MORE: Amazon reportedly plans to replace 600,000 workers with robots]
Amazon recently announced it plans to bring on 250,000 seasonal holiday workers for the third straight year. However, the company has been reducing corporate headcount for the past few years, most recently laying off roughly 200 employees from its North America stores group, which includes the Fashion and Fitness offering, in January 2025.
These actions have also included cutting hundreds of positions across several divisions of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing unit in April 2024, as well as reportedly reducing headcount by less than 5% at the unit responsible for its Buy with Prime service in January 2024.
That same month, the company eliminated several hundred roles across the Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios organization, and also laid off “just over 500 people” across its Twitch gaming streaming platform.
Earlier layoffs include November 2023 reductions in Amazon’s Alexa workforce, as well as an April 2023 decision to eliminate positions in AWS in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica.
And in a March 2023 memo to employees, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company intended to eliminate about 9,000 workers. At the beginning of 2023, Amazon said it planned to cut just over 18,000 roles in 2023, with the majority of cuts in its Amazon Stores and PXT organizations.
