Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) Initiates a New Round of Small-Scale Layoffs, with the Retail Division Hit Hardest

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) confirmed on Wednesday that it has cut a small number of employees, mainly in its Stores division, which oversees its main e-commerce website. The layoffs are the latest small-scale reduction since the large-scale layoffs that began last year and continued through January this year. The previous round of layoffs involved about 30,000 people. A person familiar with the matter said Amazon.com, Inc. cut fewer than 1,000 white-collar employees this time. An Amazon.com, Inc. spokesperson said in an emailed statement: "We have made adjustments to parts of the Stores business structure because we believe this structure will better help us execute on the company's priorities." According to reports, multiple business units under the Stores division were affected, including the customer service department and the seller partner services department; other Amazon.com, Inc. divisions may also be affected. Employees working in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom all received layoff notices. Amazon.com, Inc. founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos said in an interview on Wednesday that continued layoffs are necessary because the company over-hired during the pandemic. When asked about the 30,000 jobs lost in the previous round of layoffs, he said: "People were staying at home, they kept placing orders. By the way, that was an incredible and stressful period for us." "The whole team worked very hard and accomplished a lot, but our total headcount really grew too fast." Amazon.com, Inc. has carried out multiple rounds of layoffs since last year. In May 2025, Amazon.com, Inc. confirmed that its Devices & Services division cut about 100 positions. The division is responsible for products such as Kindle, Echo speakers, Alexa, and Zoox self-driving cars. Amazon.com, Inc. said at the time that this was only a small portion of the division's total workforce and was part of a normal business review. In July 2025, Amazon.com, Inc. AWS cut at least several hundred positions. Those affected included teams such as AWS "specialists," whose employees mainly help customers develop products and promote AWS services. Amazon.com, Inc. did not disclose the specific number, but people familiar with the matter said at least several hundred people were affected. Notably, this round of layoffs occurred shortly after CEO Andy Jassy warned that generative artificial intelligence (AI) could reduce some corporate jobs, so the market began to associate Amazon.com, Inc.'s layoffs with AI automation and improved organizational efficiency. In October 2025, Amazon.com, Inc. launched large-scale layoffs. The company announced a major restructuring of corporate employees, reducing about 14,000 corporate positions overall. Amazon.com, Inc. officially explained that the company wanted to reduce management layers, increase employee accountability, reduce bureaucratic processes, and shift resources to the most important businesses and customer needs. Amazon.com, Inc. also made clear at the time that it would continue hiring in some strategic priority areas in 2026, so this was not a comprehensive hiring freeze, but rather "cutting some positions while reallocating people to other areas." In January 2026, Amazon.com, Inc. announced that about 16,000 more positions would be cut. Amazon.com, Inc. Senior Vice President Beth Galetti said at the time that this was a continuation of the previous organizational adjustments. Some teams completed adjustments in October 2025, but other teams did not finish their evaluations until January 2026, so the layoffs were implemented in batches. By July 2026, Amazon.com, Inc. had also carried out layoffs in its AGI (artificial general intelligence) division, though the company did not disclose the specific number. Amazon.com, Inc. explained that the company was "further focusing on the projects that matter most to customers" to improve execution speed, and therefore had to eliminate some positions in the AGI organization. Amazon.com, Inc.'s current layoffs cannot simply be understood as "layoffs because business is bad." In fact, Amazon.com, Inc.'s second-quarter results released in July showed that total revenue for the quarter rose 20% year over year to $200.6 billion, better than the analyst average estimate of $197 billion; operating income was $27.5 billion, up 43% year over year; net income was $62.6 billion, up 245% year over year, including $53.4 billion in pretax non-operating other income, mainly from its investment in Anthropic; diluted earnings per share were $5.75, far above the analyst average estimate of $1.82. At the core, Amazon.com, Inc. cloud service (AWS) revenue rose 37% year over year to $42.2 billion, better than the analyst average estimate of $40.6 billion, marking its fastest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2021. Jassy said AWS is "thriving" and pointed to strong momentum in its AI and in-house chip businesses, both of which have annualized revenue exceeding $25 billion and are growing at triple-digit percentage rates year over year. Amazon.com, Inc. also raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $220 billion from the previously expected $200 billion. Therefore, Amazon.com, Inc.'s current layoff logic is closer to this: over-hiring during the pandemic created the need to streamline the corporate organization, and AI's improvement of per-capita productivity is pushing the company to reduce duplicate positions and redirect manpower and capital toward strategic areas such as AI, cloud computing, chips, and Siasun Robot&Automation.