Amazon is preparing a new round of layoffs for thousands of employees - Reuters
The retail giant explains its staff optimization by its desire to get rid of excessive bureaucracy
Amazon may announce a new round of mass layoffs on January 27, Reuters sources claim / Photo: Shutterstock.com
American e-commerce giant Amazon intends to carry out a second wave of job cuts next week as part of a plan to reduce the number of corporate staff by 30,000 people, Reuters writes, citing two sources. According to them, layoffs may begin as early as January 27, and their scale will be about the same as in October 2025, when the company left about 14 thousand office staff.
While the full extent of the optimization is not yet clear, the cuts threaten employees in Amazon Web Services' (AWS) cloud division, retail business, Prime Video streaming service and the HR department known as People Experience and Technology, Reuters' interlocutors said. Details of the plans could change, they warned.
Initially, Amazon linked the phase of staff cuts launched in October 2025 to the introduction of artificial intelligence, calling it "the most transformative technology since the Internet." However, the company's CEO Andy Jesse later clarified that the decision was driven not so much by financial factors or AI, but rather by the need to eliminate unnecessary management layers and change the corporate culture.
The full implementation of the plan to cut 30,000 positions will affect approximately 10% of Amazon's office staff. Although this figure is only a small part of the total staff of 1.58 million people, these layoffs will be the most massive in the thirty-year history of the company. Their volume will exceed the figures of 2022, when 27 thousand employees were cut.
What about the stock
Quotes of Amazon in over-the-counter trading in the United States on January 23, grow by 0.7%. In 2025, the shares of the online retailer rose by 5.2%, ranking last in terms of yield among the securities of the "Magnificent Seven". According to FactSet, Wall Street is extremely optimistic about Amazon: 70 analysts recommend its shares to buy (ratings Buy and Overweight), four advise "hold" (Hold), and there are no recommendations to sell. The average target price of $297.16, calculated by the service, implies the potential growth of quotations by 27% in the nearest year.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
