Yesterday, Amazon has announced plans to cut approximately 14,000 jobs from its corporate workforce as part of a major restructuring aimed at enabling the company to adapt more swiftly to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technological shifts.
The decision, detailed in a message to employees published on Amazon’s blog, is intended to “reduce bureaucracy, remove layers and shift resources” toward areas of higher strategic importance. According to Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, the move will allow Amazon to focus on its “biggest bets” and address customers’ “current and future needs.”
“These changes build on the work CEO Andy Jassy outlined last year to strengthen our culture and teams,” Galetti said. “We want to operate like the world’s largest start-up—set up to invent, collaborate, be connected and deliver the absolute best for customers.”
While Amazon will continue hiring in certain areas and reduce headcount in others, specific departments were not disclosed. The cuts will impact roughly 4% of the company’s global corporate workforce, which totals around 350,000 employees. In total, Amazon employed about 1.5 million people worldwide at the end of 2024.
This latest reduction follows previous rounds of layoffs, with 18,000 jobs cut in 2023 and 27,000 in 2022. Despite strong business performance, Galetti emphasized that “the world is changing quickly,” driven by what she described as the most transformative technology since the internet.
“This generation of AI is enabling companies to innovate faster than ever before,” she added. “We are convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and our business.”
Amazon joins a growing list of major corporations—including beauty giants like Estée Lauder Companies, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Coty—that are reshaping their workforces amid economic pressures and the accelerating impact of AI and automation on global business operations.
