Amazon Layoffs: Tech Giant Reportedly Set To Cut 30,000 Jobs

Amazon (AMZN) plans to lay off up to 30,000 employees in a major reduction in the company’s workforce set to begin tomorrow, according to a Monday report from Reuters. Amazon stock gave up some of the gains it made earlier the day after the report.

The layoffs will target approximately 10% of Amazon’s workforce of about 350,000, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources. Amazon employs approximately 1.5 million people on a full- and part-time basis. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters reported that the discounts, which begin this week, will include several departments within Amazon. This includes human resources, company equipment, services and operations.

Amazon has laid off workers in smaller numbers over the past two years. But the last major round of job cuts came in late 2022 and early 2023, when the company cut about 27,000 jobs.

Amazon stock is performing poorly

Amazon stock rose just over 1.2% to close at 226.97 on the stock market today. But shares rose slightly ahead of the Reuters report, hitting an intraday high of 228 earlier this afternoon.

The news comes as Amazon stock’s 3% year-to-date gain has significantly outpaced the S&P 500’s 17% gain. Amazon is also the worst performer among the Magnificent Seven megacap technology stocks.

Amazon shares were under pressure earlier in the year due to concerns that tariffs would impact profits from the company’s e-commerce business, which relies heavily on imports from China for many categories. But investors have recently focused more on Amazon’s profitable cloud business. Amazon Web Services’ year-over-year sales growth has not accelerated to the same degree as competing services Microsoft (MSFT) and Google Original alphabet (Google).

Amazon is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings late Thursday.

Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted in June that Amazon would cut jobs in response to artificial intelligence.

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy wrote in a letter to employees. “It’s hard to know exactly where this will end up over time, but in the next few years, we expect this to reduce our overall workforce across the company as we get efficiency gains from using AI more widely across the company.”

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