Amazon was busy this week, sending out pink slips. When it’s all said and done, this massive round of layoffs could hit up to 30,000 employees. This amounts to about 10 percent of the entire corporate workforce.
The reduction in force (RIF) is expected to spread across several departments, including Human Resources, Cloud Computing (AWS), and Advertising. Moreover, this is Amazon’s largest RIF since 2022, which eliminated around 27,000 jobs.
The massive layoffs have several aims. First, to address the remaining excess of the pandemic hiring spree, when online shopping boomed and Amazon doubled its warehouse network. Second, CEO Andy Jassy says he wants to use Artificial Intelligence to “do more with less.”
In other words, these layoffs aren’t merely a reaction to typical economic headwinds – things like high prices or a slower market. Rather, they’re part of a structural shift for big corporations and will have permanent consequences for business, labor, and the economy.
For example, massive layoffs like this at a company as enormous as Amazon are a signal that big businesses are tightening their belts. They’re looking for ways to cut expenses without hurting growth. At the same time, as tens of thousands of corporate jobs disappear, consumers will be compelled to reduce their spending.
Amazon still has a market capitalization of over $2.3 trillion. These layoffs show that even the mega companies are working to conserve cash and increase efficiency by cutting jobs and replacing workers with AI. Specifically, the current strategy is to achieve growth without hiring.
Efficiency is the New Growth
Amazon is not alone in this “do more with less” strategy. In fact, RTX Corporation, an aerospace and defense company, recently noted that its sales rose without adding employees.
Goldman Sachs recently sent a memo to staff stating they would “constrain head count growth” to get more efficient with AI. Even Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to keep its head count flat for the next three years while growing sales.
Same story with UPS. The package delivery company announced this week it’s slashing a massive 48,000 jobs – 34,000 from operations and 14,000 from management – in a major effort to cut costs. This huge workforce reduction, which helped UPS beat Q3 profit expectations, is part of a plan to save $3.5 billion in 2025.
A big driver for the layoffs is a massive push towards automation and AI to make operations more efficient and less labor dependent. Here’s UPS Chief Financial Officer Brian Dykes on the features and benefits of AI and automation:
“You need less variable capacity, fewer leased aircraft, fewer rented vehicles, fewer seasonal workers. That allows you to run a much more efficient network.”
JPMorgan Chase’s CFO Jeremy Barnum recently told investors that the bank now has a “very strong bias against having the reflective response” to hire more people. The first thought is no longer ‘hire,’ but ‘automate.’
Earlier in October, white-collar workers from Rivian Automotive, Molson Coors, Booz Allen Hamilton and General Motors received pink slips, or learned that they would come soon. The latest wave of generative AI is proving it can efficiently handle tasks in coding, marketing, customer support, and more. Thus, companies are using AI to staff fewer jobs.
While AI is augmenting some roles, its primary corporate function right now is a swift reduction in payroll…
Job Eliminator
One of the key takeaways from Amazon’s layoffs is that the increased use of AI is not just for assisting, but for replacing. The layoffs are a direct result of Amazon’s massive investment in AI, which is now explicitly framed as a job eliminator.
In this regard, Amazon CEO Jassy already told employees that the increased use of generative AI will “reduce our total corporate workforce” in the next few years, calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime technological change.”
Jassy is putting his money where his mouth is. For the second quarter of 2025, Amazon reported $31.4 billion on capital expenditures, with most of that dedicated to AI and cloud-computing investments.
Yesterday (October 30), following market close, Amazon released its third quarter 2025 earnings results. Of note, AWS segment sales increased 20 percent year-over-year to $33 billion.
Amazon has also been automating its warehouses using Blue Jay, an impressive system of robotic arms combined with AI systems, which will significantly reduce the need for warehouse laborers. Per the announcement from Amazon:
“Visually, Blue Jay operates like a juggler who never drops a ball—only here, the “balls” are tens of thousands of items moving at high speed. It’s also like a conductor leading an orchestra, with every motion in harmony.”
Blue Jay also doesn’t call in sick, take lunch breaks and vacation days, or require the company to contribute to an employee 401(k) match. This is but one example of the endless types of automated, worker replacement, AI applications that are being rolled out.
Blue collar and white-collar workers alike should be worried. AI is coming for their jobs.
But what choice do companies have. Now that the AI cat is out of the bag, its implementation and use are required to compete. Amazon’s value is now fundamentally tied to its AI aptitude. After reporting slower cloud growth than competitors earlier this year, its shares fell 7 percent.
But this proved to just be a slight setback. As part of yesterday’s Q3 report, Amazon “added 3.8 gigawatts of power capacity in the past 12 months – more than any other cloud provider.” This sent the after-hours share price skyrocketing by over 13 percent the last we saw.
Simply put, AI has moved from a shiny new tool to a serious factor when executives are making headcount decisions. The future is looking lean, and it’s being powered by algorithms!
Laptop Class on Notice
Amazon CEO Jassy’s aggressive push into generative AI means a slimmer corporate workforce is on the horizon. This is an all-encompassing push to replace human tasks with tools like AI agents built on services such as Amazon Bedrock. The impact is already being felt across Amazon’s white-collar departments.
In Tech and AWS, the goal is to massively speed up development. AI is being deployed to write code, summarize information, and tackle research. The Bedrock platform itself allows developers to create powerful AI agents that execute complex workflows, essentially automating traditional software roles. In the process, white-collar jobs are eliminated.
Human Resources – everyone’s least favorite department – is also a prime target. Layoffs have already hit the department as Amazon seeks to automate administrative work. Generative AI is now handling automated resume screening and shortlisting. AI-powered assistants are taking over common employee queries and training support, cutting the need for human administrators.
AI is also taking over Advertising and Content creation. It can instantly write new marketing copy, draft social media posts, and create realistic images for campaigns. This transition proves that AI is rapidly automating the “laptop class” jobs that were once considered safe.
When the industrial revolution took root, workers moved from the farm to the factory. When factory jobs were offshored over the last 40 years, the next generation of workers moved to the office. Now, with the burgeoning AI revolution taking over both factory and office jobs, where will these workers go?
Is there room for them all on the government dole? Can AI somehow turn unemployment into funemployment?
Certainly, as AI automates routine work, it will also create an entirely new set of jobs. Prompt Engineers, for instance, are needed to effectively communicate with AI. There’s also the need for AI Trainers to perfect the models.
Perhaps a whole suite of new jobs will soon appear to fulfill the promise of AI. Yet for workers who received pink slips this week, those jobs better come soon.
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