【October 28, 2025, Epoch Times】(Reporter Wang Junyi reported) American technology giant Amazon.com Inc. is reportedly laying off as many as 30,000 white-collar employees starting from Tuesday (October 28th) in an effort to cut costs and address the issue of over-hiring during the pandemic.
According to sources cited by Reuters, this round of layoffs mainly targets corporate (white-collar) employees rather than warehouse and logistics frontline staff.
The layoffs this time cover various departments including human resources (PXT department), operations, equipment and services, as well as cloud business (AWS). Department heads received internal training on Monday to prepare for notifying laid-off employees via email on Tuesday morning. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.
Since taking over as CEO, Andy Jassy has been driving a “de-bureaucratization” reform at Amazon, calling for a reduction in management levels, departmental integration, and the establishment of an anonymous complaint channel to identify inefficient processes. Earlier this year, the company received over 1,500 suggestions internally, leading to approximately 450 process adjustments.
In a memo to employees in June, Jassy pointed out that with the introduction of Generative AI and automation tools, “We will need fewer people for certain jobs, but we will need more diverse talents,” and he anticipated that “the overall size of the corporate workforce may shrink in the coming years.”
Sky Canaves, an analyst at market research firm eMarketer, told Reuters that Amazon may have improved internal efficiency through AI implementation, “enough to support significant corporate-level layoffs.”
Furthermore, at the beginning of the year, Amazon required corporate employees to return to the office for five days a week, which was one of the strictest attendance policies in Silicon Valley. Sources indicated that this policy did not yield sufficient natural attrition rates, prompting the company to further reduce personnel costs through proactive layoffs.
According to the website Layoffs.fyi, as of 2025, more than 200 tech companies worldwide have laid off nearly 100,000 people. The total industry layoffs reached 153,000 last year, and in 2023 it reached 260,000, the highest in recent years.
This year, Microsoft laid off about 15,000 people, Meta cut approximately 600 jobs in its artificial intelligence department, Google reduced over a hundred positions in its cloud design team, and Intel laid off about 22,000 people, one of the largest in scale.
Amazon has already laid off around 27,000 employees in batches since 2022, with this round setting a new record. However, the company is continuing to recruit seasonal staff for warehouse and logistics, planning to hire 250,000 temporary employees during the holiday season, the same as the previous two years.
AWS, Amazon’s main profit source in the cloud department, reported revenue of $30.9 billion in the second quarter, a 17.5% year-on-year increase, lower than Microsoft Azure’s 39% and Google Cloud’s 32%. Sales are estimated to grow by about 18% to $32 billion in the third quarter, slightly lower than the same period last year. Last week, AWS experienced a 15-hour service outage affecting several online platforms including Snapchat and Venmo.
Despite this, investors have reacted positively to the restructuring plan. Amazon’s stock price rose by 1.2% on Monday, closing at $226.97. The market is eagerly anticipating Amazon’s third-quarter financial report to see if AI investments and cost controls can translate into tangible returns.