Amazon Layoffs 2026: Which Divisions Will Be Impacted by Latest Job Cuts? Know Details

Amazon Layoffs 2026: E-commerce major Amazon has confirmed that it will cut 16,000 jobs globally over the next three months as part of a broader restructuring exercise, even as it continues to expand its investments in artificial intelligence (AI).

The company said affected employees in the US will be given 90 days to explore internal opportunities, along with severance pay and additional transition support. The announcement was made by Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, in a blog post issued on Wednesday.

“We’ve been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” Galetti said.

The latest round of job cuts comes just months after Amazon

announced the elimination of 14,000 roles. Together, these reductions form part of a longer wave of layoffs that began in late 2022 and early 2023, during which around 27,000 employees were let go.

According to a report by Reuters, Amazon has been planning a second phase of job cuts as part of a wider effort to remove nearly 30,000 corporate roles across the organisation.

Which divisions will be affected?

Employees across multiple business verticals are expected to be impacted. These include Amazon Web Services (AWS), the core retail business, Prime Video, and the People Experience and Technology human resources unit, the report said.

Despite the layoffs, Amazon said it will continue hiring and investing in areas that are critical to its long-term growth.

“We’ve been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalised their organisational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now,” the blog post noted.

Amazon had earlier linked its October round of layoffs to the growing adoption of AI-driven software tools. An internal memo cited by Reuters said, “this generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”

However, CEO Andy Jassy later struck a different note while speaking to analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. He said the job reductions were “not really financially driven and it’s not even really AI-driven,” adding that “it’s culture.”

The proposed 30,000 job cuts would account for a relatively small portion of Amazon’s global workforce of around 1.58 million employees. Nearly 10 per cent of the company’s corporate workforce would be affected, while the vast majority of Amazon’s employees continue to work in fulfilment centres and warehouses worldwide.