By News Editor 
Amazon announced Wednesday it will eliminate 16,000 corporate positions worldwide, part of a broader effort to reduce bureaucracy, cut management layers, and reorganize the company as competition around artificial intelligence intensifies.
The layoffs bring Amazon’s total announced job cuts to roughly 30,000 over the past three months, following an earlier round in October. Company executives say the reductions are aimed primarily at corporate and managerial roles, not the company’s vast warehouse workforce.
In a blog post, Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, said the company is trying to “increase ownership” by flattening its organizational structure.
“We’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” Galetti wrote, adding that Amazon does not plan to announce mass layoffs on a regular schedule, but will continue making “adjustments as appropriate.”
U.S.-based employees affected by the cuts will be given 90 days to apply for other roles within the company, along with severance and transition assistance.
Amazon employed about 1.57 million people globally as of late September, most of them in fulfillment centers and delivery operations. Its corporate workforce totals roughly 350,000 employees, meaning the latest layoffs amount to about 4.6% of corporate staff.
Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has repeatedly warned that Amazon’s pandemic-era hiring spree left the company overly layered with management. He has also told employees that artificial intelligence will reduce the need for certain roles as automation expands across the business.
The announcement came amid a broader wave of corporate downsizing tied to AI investment. Earlier Wednesday, ASML Holding NV said it would eliminate 1,700 positions, largely targeting managers. Over the past year, Microsoft cut thousands of jobs with a similar focus on management roles, while Nissan’s North American unit and Amtrak each reduced roughly 20% of their top-level management.
Several tech firms have also launched layoffs in early 2026. Meta Platforms said it would cut more than 1,000 jobs from its Reality Labs division to redirect resources toward AI-powered wearables. Pinterest announced plans to eliminate less than 15% of its workforce and reduce office space, while Autodesk said it would cut about 1,000 positions.
At Amazon, news of the layoffs spread internally before the public announcement. An email scheduling a meeting titled “Project Dawn” referenced “impacted colleagues” in the U.S., Canada, and Costa Rica, quickly circulating on internal message boards and social media platforms where employees speculated about the scale of the cuts.
As major corporations race to deploy AI tools and streamline operations, Amazon’s latest layoffs underscore how workers—particularly white-collar employees—are bearing the cost of the tech industry’s next transformation.