Amazon Announces Cuts of About 14,000 Corporate Jobs in Largest Restructuring Yet

28 October 2025

Technology and retail giant Amazon announced on 28 October 2025 that it plans to eliminate approximately 14,000 corporate roles globally, initiating what insiders suggest could expand into cuts of up to 30,000 jobs.

The announcement is part of a sweeping redesign of Amazon’s corporate structure, driven by the need to reverse a hiring surge from the pandemic era and to align the workforce with a rapid shift toward artificial-intelligence (AI) acceleration. The roles targeted span a variety of departments: devices, advertising, human resources (People Experience & Technology), Prime Video, and the cloud-computing arm Amazon Web Services (AWS). A memo sent to employees by senior vice-president Beth Galetti described AI as “the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet” and emphasised the need to reduce bureaucracy, flatten layers of management and build what she called “leaner ownership.”

Affected employees were notified via personal emails early Tuesday, informing them their roles would be terminated and that they would be given up to 90 days to seek internal reassignment. One internal message reviewed by Reuters read: “Unfortunately, your role is being eliminated and your employment will end after a non-working period.” While the layoffs focus only on the corporate workforce around 350,000 of Amazon’s total global workforce of 1.55 million they represent nearly 4 percent of the entire organisation, and almost 10 percent of the corporate staffing pool.

The move comes after smaller layoffs earlier in 2025, including hundreds of roles at AWS reported in July, as Amazon has navigated slower growth in its cloud business compared with competitors. CEO Andy Jassy embarked on a broader initiative this year to streamline the company’s internal culture rolling out an anonymous process-improvement channel, reducing management layers, and aiming to make Amazon act more like a startup.

From a financial and investor perspective the cuts were broadly welcomed. Amazon’s stock rose modestly after the announcement, reflecting investor relief at the prospect of tighter cost-control even as revenues in many divisions remain healthy. However, analysts caution that the real test will be whether Amazon can maintain innovation momentum at scale, while reorganising talent and retaining competitiveness in areas such as cloud, devices and entertainment.

The decision also reverberates in the broader technology industry: Amazon joins several other major firms that have announced significant layoffs or restructurings in 2025 as they grapple with post-pandemic market shifts and the rise of AI-driven workplace transformation. The cuts highlight how a seemingly resilient company is still adapting to fundamental changes in how technology-driven businesses operate.

Business Insider

Yet the announcement raises key questions and challenges. While Amazon will continue hiring in certain priority areas, the company has not provided full clarity on the timeline or the final scope of the job reductions. The deeper question now is how the company will manage the balance between running lean and continuing to invest aggressively in new growth opportunities especially as it accelerates deployment of automation, generative AI tools, and global infrastructure spending. Analysts note that the governance of reductions, internal morale, and talent retention in critical units will be key factors in whether the restructuring succeeds.

In the coming quarters, monitoring how teams in devices, AWS, advertising and services respond to the changes will be critical. For employees, the shift underscores how even top-tier tech companies are increasingly being redesigned around agility, automation and flexibility. For Amazon, the message is clear: after a boom hiring phase driven by pandemic demand, the next era is about cost discipline, speed of innovation and building structures around new technologies rather than old ways of working.