SAN FRANCISCO, California: Amazon is preparing to deepen a significant restructuring of its white-collar workforce, with another wave of corporate layoffs expected as early as next week, according to people familiar with the plans.

Amazon is planning a second round of job cuts as part of its broader effort to eliminate nearly 30,000 corporate roles, the sources said. The reductions could begin as soon as January 27 and are expected to be similar in size to last year's cuts, which eliminated roughly 14,000 positions.

The people requested anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the company's plans and cautioned that details could still change. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

The planned layoffs would affect several major divisions, including Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and the company's human resources organisation, known internally as People Experience and Technology, the sources said. The full scope of the cuts has not been finalised.

Amazon began the current downsizing effort in October, when it cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, roughly half of the 30,000 target first reported. If completed, the full reduction would represent nearly 10 percent of Amazon's corporate workforce, though only a small fraction of its total global headcount of about 1.58 million employees. Most Amazon workers are employed in warehouses and fulfilment centres.

The company trimmed about 27,000 jobs in 2022, but the current plan would mark the largest layoff in Amazon's three-decade history.

Previous cuts tied to AI then culture 

When Amazon announced the October layoffs, it initially linked the move to advances in artificial intelligence. In an internal letter at the time, the company 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, Chief Executive Andy Jassy later played down AI as the main driver of the reductions. Speaking to analysts during Amazon's third-quarter earnings call, Jassy said the cuts were "not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven."

Rather, he said, "it's culture," arguing that the company had become overly bureaucratic.

"You end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers," Jassy said.

Earlier in 2025, Jassy had told employees and investors that Amazon's corporate workforce would likely shrink over time as the company realised efficiency gains from AI. Like many large corporations, Amazon has increasingly used AI tools to write software code and deploy AI agents to automate routine tasks, reducing costs and reliance on human labour.

Amazon highlighted its latest AI models and services at its annual AWS cloud computing conference in December, underscoring how central the technology has become to its long-term strategy.

Timing and impact

Employees affected by the October layoffs were told they would remain on the payroll for 90 days, during which they could apply for other roles within Amazon or seek jobs elsewhere. That transition period expires on Monday, just ahead of the expected new round of cuts.

The looming layoffs come as companies across the technology sector continue to reassess staffing levels after rapid hiring earlier in the decade and amid growing pressure to streamline operations.

While the planned cuts would be significant for Amazon's corporate ranks, they would still represent a small share of the company's overall workforce, which is dominated by logistics and fulfilment staff supporting its global retail and delivery operations.