Wednesday’s cuts are the second mass layoffs in three months on the e-commerce large.
Revealed On 28 Jan 2026
Amazon is slashing 16,000 jobs in a second wave of layoffs on the e-commerce large in three months, as the corporate restructures and leans on synthetic intelligence.
Wednesday’s cuts observe the 14,000 redundancies that the Seattle, Washington–based mostly firm made in October. The layoffs are anticipated to have an effect on staff working in Prime Video, Amazon Internet Providers, and the corporate’s human assets division, based on the Reuters information company, which first reported the cuts.
Really useful Tales
listing of 4 objectsfinish of listing
Amazon confirmed to Al Jazeera that every one the cuts to the corporate will have an effect on corporate-level staff.
In a memo to the staff, shared with Al Jazeera, Amazon mentioned employees in the US impacted by the cuts may have a 90-day window to discover a new position within the firm.
“Teammates who’re unable to discover a new position at Amazon or who select to not search for one, we’ll present transition help together with severance pay, outplacement companies, medical health insurance advantages [as applicable], and extra,” Beth Galetti, senior vice chairman of Individuals Expertise and Expertise at Amazon, mentioned within the observe supplied to Al Jazeera.
The introduced reductions come amid a broader restructuring effort on the firm. Earlier this week, Amazon introduced it might shut its brick-and-mortar Amazon Go and Amazon Contemporary grocery shops, accounting for greater than 70 places throughout the US.
A few of these bodily shops will likely be transformed into Entire Meals Market places. Amazon acquired the Austin, Texas–based mostly grocery chain in 2017, and it has since grown by 40 %.
The cuts come alongside elevated funding in AI. In June, CEO Andy Jassy touted funding in generative AI and floated the potential for redundancies.
“We count on that it will scale back our whole company workforce as we get effectivity features from utilizing AI extensively throughout the corporate,” Jassy mentioned in a weblog put up on the time.
In response to the AFL-CIO CEO PayWatch tracker, Jassy made 43 occasions greater than the median worker on the firm.
Amazon’s inventory tumbled in noon buying and selling and was down 0.7 %. Total, nevertheless, the inventory is up 7 % yr up to now.
Wave of cuts
Amazon is the most recent firm in a wave of redundancies hitting the tech sector at the beginning of the yr. Earlier this week, Pinterest introduced it might lower 780 jobs because the social media firm reallocated assets amid elevated funding in AI. Final week, Autodesk mentioned it might lower about 1,000 jobs, additionally tied to AI.
Layoffs.fyi, a web site that tracks redundancies within the tech sector, reveals that greater than 123,000 tech employees misplaced their jobs in 2025 as firms, together with Salesforce and Duolingo, doubled down on AI investments.
However it isn’t simply the tech sector dealing with redundancies. On Tuesday, UPS also announced job cuts. The transport large mentioned it might eradicate 30,000 jobs and shut 24 amenities because it reduces deliveries with Amazon.
UPS inventory was down greater than 1.2 % in noon buying and selling.
