Employees whose roles are eliminated will be given 90 days to seek another position within the company.
Amazon said on Jan. 28 it will eliminate about 16,000 roles across the company as part of an ongoing restructuring effort aimed at flattening management layers, reducing bureaucracy, and redirecting resources toward artificial intelligence (AI) and other strategic priorities.
The cuts were outlined in an internal memo to staff from Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, who said the changes affect teams that had not completed earlier rounds of reorganization announced in the fall of 2025.
“The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon,” Galetti wrote in the memo, now published on the company’s corporate website.
She said that the company was “working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted.”
Galetti said most U.S.-based employees whose roles are eliminated will be given 90 days to seek another position within Amazon and that timelines will vary internationally based on local labor laws. Employees who do not secure a new role internally, or who choose not to pursue one, will receive severance pay, outplacement services, and health insurance benefits where applicable.
“I recognize this is difficult news, which is why I’m sharing what’s happening and why,” Galetti wrote.
Despite the cuts, Amazon will continue hiring and investing in priority areas, Galetti said. She also said that the reduction does not signal a cycle of recurring layoffs and that teams will keep adjusting structure and pace as needed to stay competitive in a fast-changing environment.
“We’re still in the early stages of building every one of our businesses and there’s significant opportunity ahead,” she wrote.
Amazon employs about 1.56 million people globally, according to the company’s first-quarter earnings report for 2025.
Continuation of October Layoffs
Amazon’s announcement builds on a major restructuring disclosed in late October 2025, when Amazon said it would eliminate about 14,000 corporate positions, or 4 percent of Amazon’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees.
At the time, Galetti described the move as part of an effort to make the company “stronger, faster, and more innovative,” while operating “like the world’s largest startup.”
By Tom Ozimek
