Amazon is planning a second round of corporate layoffs this week as part of a broader effort to reduce its corporate workforce by around 30,000 roles, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. The new round could begin as soon as Tuesday, with Reuters adding that Amazon declined to comment.
Allegedly, roles in Amazon Web Services (AWS), retail, Prime Video, and Amazon’s human resources organization, known as People Experience and Technology, are slated to be affected. However, the full scope remains unclear, and plans may change. The first round of 30,000 began in October, when an initial 14,000 workers were laid off. The full 30,000 would be nearly 10 percent of the firm’s corporate workforce and would represent the largest layoff in Amazon’s three-decade history.
Reuters reported that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts the reduction was “not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven,” adding that “it’s culture,” meaning the company has too much bureaucracy. “You end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers,” he allegedly added.
An Expansion of Amazon’s Layoffs Strategy
Amazon cut about 14,000 white-collar jobs in October, just under half of the 30,000 target first reported by Reuters. However, it was still the largest workforce reduction for the business since 2022. In that earlier round, Amazon tied job cuts to the rise of AI, with an internal letter stating: “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”
While the collective layoffs embody a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55 million global workforce, the strategy highlights the industry-wide transition in which AI-powered automation is resculpting the architecture of modern corporate life, for better or worse. This was also illustrated last summer by similar AI-prompted layoffs from Microsoft.
In October, affected workers were told they would remain on the payroll for 90 days while applying for roles internally or seeking other employment, and that period expires today, Monday, January 26.
Breaking Down the Longer Arc: The Recent History of Amazon Layoffs and RTO Controversy
Although Jassy says the layoffs are “not really” predicated on AI’s promise, Amazon’s moves typify a broader corporate shift toward automation. Amazon itself has been one of the most publicly prominent advocates of this in its sweeping efforts toward “reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs,” according to a memo from Beth Galetti, an executive at Amazon, in October. Notably, Amazon touted its own latest AI models at its annual AWS cloud computing conference in December.
Our read is that “Amazon layoffs” are best understood as a proxy for a broader enterprise reality. The next phase of digital transformation will be judged less by pilots and more by whether leaders can redesign operating models to eliminate handoffs without breaking governance. In UC, that tends to show up in the unglamorous parts of the stack, including provisioning, escalations, policy management, and the mechanics of support, where “layers” become lived experience for employees.
This pivot to sterner top-down management was echoed by Amazon’s return-to-office policy, announced in September 2024 and enforced from January 2025, which has become one of Big Tech’s strictest, requiring corporate staff to be in the office five days a week.
Yet Reuters cited internal sources in autumn 2024 suggesting the mandate did not produce the level of attrition Amazon anticipated. In practice, the enforcement mechanism has also hardened. Employees who maintained remote arrangements or failed to “badge in” consistently have reportedly faced termination without severance, with such absences treated as “voluntary resignations.”
