Amazon says it is laying off 16,000 employees

Summary

Amazon said today that it is cutting 16,000 jobs across the company. This reduction comes after the e-commerce company laid off 14,000 people in October. In a letter to employees, Senior VP of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, said that these layoffs were made for “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” She noted that the reason for the second round of massive layoffs within three months was that several teams in the company hadn’t finished their restructuring. Galetti didn’t outright deny that there might be more job slashes in the company, but said that the company is not trying to create a pattern of large layoffs every few months. “Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months. That’s not our plan. But just as we always have, every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers, and make adjustments as appropriate,” she said in a blog post. In October, Amazon said that it had 1.57 million employees, and had registered single-digit growth in the past five quarters prior to that, according to the company’s Q3 2025 filings. The company is set to publish its Q4 2025 results next week. In its latest blog post, Galetti said that despite these job cuts, the company will continue to hire in strategic areas. Last year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote a memo that said because of AI, the company will need fewer people “doing some ofthe jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.” He also indicated that the company’s corporate workforce will see a reduction in the next few years. Amazon sent an erroneous meeting invite to numerous AWS employees that addressed job cuts and a “Project Dawn” initiative, confusing workers, as reported by Business Insider. The invite was canceled shortly after. On Tuesday, Amazon said that it is closing its physical Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh Stores to concentrate on...