Amazon will lay off 16,000 office workers globally to streamline operations and focus on AI growth and AWS expansion
NEW YORK: Amazon announces 16,000 global layoffs as it trims bureaucracy and doubles down on AI and cloud ambitions with AWS.
The job cuts, aimed at “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” were announced by senior vice president Beth Galetti.
Media reports from October had said roughly 30,000 job cuts were planned in total. This would comprise nearly 10% of the 350,000 office jobs at Amazon.
The layoffs would not affect the distribution and warehouse workers that make up the bulk of the company’s 1.5 million employees.
Amazon did not give any breakdown of the latest cuts or specify which divisions would be affected. The company said every team will continue to evaluate its operations and make adjustments as appropriate.
The company will release its full-year 2025 results on February 5. In its last quarterly earnings statement in October, Amazon said it spent USD 1.8 billion on severance costs tied to planned job cuts.
Amazon said new positions will be offered to employees where possible.
The layoffs are in line with a trend in big tech to trim white-collar management jobs. Microsoft in July said it had slashed a little less than 4% of its global workforce, about 15,000 jobs.
CEO Andy Jassy said in October, after the first round of layoffs, that the cuts were not related to budget or AI investments. “Really, it’s culture,” he said, decrying too many layers of management.
Facebook owner Meta has also cut jobs over the past year to remove organizational bloat following aggressive hiring during the pandemic.
Dutch tech giant ASML on Wednesday said it would cut hundreds of management jobs to improve internal organization. HP and Oracle have also announced recent layoffs.
Like other tech giants, Amazon is making massive investments to grab a slice of the AI revolution pie.
It is particularly banking on the performance of its subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s leading cloud provider. AWS is engaged in a race against its fast-growing rivals, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Spending on developing new AI-based chips and services is growing exponentially. In December, Amazon announced it would invest more than USD 35 billion in India.
