SEATTLE – October 28, 2025 (Market Insider) — Amazon is preparing to lay off as many as 30,000 corporate employees in what would be the largest round of job cuts in its history, marking a dramatic moment in the global tech industry’s ongoing restructuring wave.
According to CNBC, Amazon will begin notifying affected staff by email starting October 28, in a move that will span most of its business divisions — from cloud computing and retail to media and devices. The cuts mark the company’s biggest downsizing of white-collar workers since its founding.
If confirmed, the layoffs would also represent the largest in the tech sector since 2020, according to data from Layoffs.fyi. So far in 2025, more than 200 technology companies have shed about 98,000 jobs amid slowing growth and the rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI).
Amazon, the world’s second-largest private employer with 1.54 million employees worldwide as of mid-2025, is expected to focus reductions on its 350,000-person office workforce rather than its warehouse operations.
A Broader Tech Retrenchment Driven by AI
Amazon’s move follows deep cuts across the industry.
- Microsoft has eliminated roughly 15,000 positions this year.
- Meta recently slashed 600 jobs in its AI division.
- Google has cut over 100 roles in its cloud design team.
- Salesforce laid off 4,000 customer-service workers amid AI expansion.
- Intel leads the pack with a staggering 22,000 jobs lost in 2025 alone.
The trend underscores how AI is fundamentally reshaping corporate structures, reducing demand for some traditional roles while creating new ones in emerging technologies.
Amazon’s Cost-Cutting Era
CEO Andy Jassy, who has been aggressively streamlining operations since the pandemic, launched a multiyear cost-cutting campaign aimed at “simplifying the organization” and “removing layers of management.”
Since 2022, Amazon has already let go of more than 27,000 employees, mainly from its retail, cloud, and media units. The new layoffs deepen that restructuring and highlight Jassy’s earlier warning:
“AI will require fewer people for certain jobs — and more for new ones that don’t exist yet,” he said in June.
While the long-term impact remains uncertain, Jassy acknowledged that Amazon’s overall white-collar workforce will likely shrink further in the coming years as automation and AI adoption accelerate.
Industry Context
The layoffs come amid a broader reckoning for Big Tech. After a hiring boom during the pandemic, many firms are now facing slowing revenue growth, rising costs, and shifting investment priorities. In 2023 alone, nearly 1,200 tech companies cut over 260,000 jobs, marking one of the toughest years on record for the sector.
For Amazon and its peers, 2025 is shaping up as a year of AI-driven transformation — and painful human consequences.
