Wednesday’s cuts are the second mass layoffs in three months at the e-commerce giant.
Published On 28 Jan 2026
Amazon is slashing 16,000 jobs in a second wave of layoffs at the e-commerce giant in three months, as the company restructures and leans on artificial intelligence.
Wednesday’s cuts follow the 14,000 redundancies that the Seattle, Washington–based company made in October. The layoffs are expected to affect employees working in Prime Video, Amazon Web Services, and the company’s human resources department, according to the Reuters news agency, which first reported the cuts.
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Amazon confirmed to Al Jazeera that all the cuts to the company will affect corporate-level employees.
In a memo to the employees, shared with Al Jazeera, Amazon said workers in the United States impacted by the cuts will have a 90-day window to find a new role in the company.
“Teammates who are unable to find a new role at Amazon or who choose not to look for one, we’ll provide transition support including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits [as applicable], and more,” Beth Galetti, senior vice president of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, said in the note provided to Al Jazeera.
The announced reductions come amid a broader restructuring effort at the company. Earlier this week, Amazon announced it would close its brick-and-mortar Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh grocery stores, accounting for more than 70 locations across the US.
Some of those physical stores will be converted into Whole Foods Market locations. Amazon acquired the Austin, Texas–based grocery chain in 2017, and it has since grown by 40 percent.
The cuts come alongside increased investment in AI. In June, CEO Andy Jassy touted investment in generative AI and floated the possibility of redundancies.
“We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” Jassy said in a blog post at the time.
According to the AFL-CIO CEO PayWatch tracker, Jassy made 43 times more than the median employee at the company.
Amazon’s stock tumbled in midday trading and was down 0.7 percent. Overall, however, the stock is up 7 percent year to date.
Wave of cuts
Amazon is the latest company in a wave of redundancies hitting the tech sector at the start of the year. Earlier this week, Pinterest announced it would cut 780 jobs as the social media company reallocated resources amid increased investment in AI. Last week, Autodesk said it would cut about 1,000 jobs, also tied to AI.
Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks redundancies in the tech sector, shows that more than 123,000 tech workers lost their jobs in 2025 as companies, including Salesforce and Duolingo, doubled down on AI investments.
But it is not just the tech sector facing redundancies. On Tuesday, UPS also announced job cuts. The shipping giant said it would eliminate 30,000 jobs and close 24 facilities as it reduces deliveries with Amazon.
UPS stock was down more than 1.2 percent in midday trading.