Amazon is planning to begin massive job cuts today, and will possibly terminate as many as 30,000 corporate employees.
The reasons for the job cuts are twofold. Amazon CEO Andy Jassey has described Amazon’s corporate structure as having an excess of bureaucracy. These layoffs are part of his undertaking to fix that. His other efforts have included installing an anonymous inefficiency complaint hotline, which Jassey said led to over 450 changes in Amazon’s processes’.
Jassey is also pushing hard to increase Amazon’s utilization of AI tools. In June, Jassey wrote a note to employees saying that the rollout of generative and agentic AI would reduce Amazon’s total corporate workforce over the next few years. So far, he is making good on that claim.
The effect isn’t just occurring at Amazon. Tech companies across the country are seeking to streamline their operations and reduce overhead costs by replacing their workforce with AI where they can. In 2024, Intuit cut 1,800 employees to make way for generative AI use. IBM and Klarna have also led AI-driven employee layoffs.
In 2024, 153,000 jobs were lost in the tech sector. So far in 2025, the number sits at 98,000.
This is a huge negative for people working in the tech sector, and a huge positive for the balance sheets of the companies they work for. Amazon, along with many other tech companies, has invested huge amounts of money into long term AI infrastructure projects. These layoffs will help them offset some of the short-term losses imposed by those projects.
