Amazon (AMZN.US) begins a new round of small-scale layoffs, with the retail division hit hardest

According to Zhitong Finance APP, Amazon (AMZN.US) confirmed on Wednesday that the company has laid off a small number of employees, mainly involving its Stores division responsible for its main e-commerce website. This round of layoffs marks the latest small-scale downsizing since Amazon's large-scale layoffs that began last year and continued through January this year. The previous round affected about 30,000 employees. According to an informed source, Amazon cut fewer than 1,000 white-collar jobs this time.

An Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement: "We have made some adjustments to the structure of the Stores business, as we believe this structure will better help us implement the company's key initiatives."

Reports indicate that several business lines under the Stores division are affected, including customer service and seller partner services; other Amazon divisions may also be impacted. Employees in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom have received layoff notifications.

Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos said in an interview on Wednesday that ongoing layoffs are necessary because the company hired excessively during the pandemic. When asked about the 30,000 jobs lost in the last round, he commented: "At that time, everyone was at home, and they kept placing orders. By the way, that was an incredible and stressful period for us." "The whole team worked very hard and accomplished a lot, but our total headcount did grow too quickly."

Since last year, Amazon has executed multiple rounds of layoffs. In May 2025, Amazon confirmed that its Devices & Services division cut about 100 jobs. This division is responsible for products including Kindle, Echo speakers, Alexa, and Zoox autonomous vehicles. Amazon said at that time that this was a small portion of the division's total workforce and part of a routine business review.

In July 2025, Amazon AWS cut at least several hundred jobs. Those affected included teams such as AWS “specialists,” whose employees primarily assist customers in developing products and promoting AWS services. Amazon did not disclose specific numbers, but sources said at least several hundred people were impacted. Notably, this round of layoffs came shortly after CEO Andy Jassy warned that generative artificial intelligence (AI) could reduce some corporate positions, leading the market to associate Amazon's layoffs with AI automation and organizational efficiency improvements.

In October 2025, Amazon launched large-scale layoffs. The company announced major adjustments for corporate employees, with a total reduction of about 14,000 corporate positions. Officially, Amazon explained it wants to reduce management layers, increase employee accountability, cut bureaucracy, and redirect resources to its most important businesses and customer needs. Amazon also made it clear that they would continue hiring in some strategic focus areas in 2026, so this is not a complete hiring freeze but “eliminating certain positions while reallocating staff to other domains.”

In January 2026, Amazon announced another 16,000 jobs cut. Amazon Senior Vice President Beth Galetti said this was a continuation of previous organizational adjustments. Some teams completed these changes in October 2025, but others did not finalize evaluations until January 2026, resulting in layoffs being implemented in stages.

By July 2026, Amazon again carried out layoffs in its AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) division, but the company did not disclose specific numbers. Amazon explained that the company is “further focusing on the projects most important to customers” to increase execution speed and therefore had to eliminate some positions within the AGI organization.

Amazon’s current layoffs cannot simply be interpreted as “layoffs due to poor performance.” In fact, Amazon’s second-quarter results announced in July showed that total revenue for the quarter grew 20% year-on-year to $200.6 billion, exceeding analysts’ average forecast of $197.0 billion; operating profit was $27.5 billion, up 43% year-on-year; net profit was $62.6 billion, up 245% year-on-year, including $53.4 billion in pre-tax non-operating other income, mainly from its investment in Anthropic; diluted earnings per share were $5.75, much higher than analysts’ average estimate of $1.82.

The most core division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), saw revenue grow 37% year-on-year to $42.2 billion, better than analysts’ average expectation of $40.6 billion, and marking the fastest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2021. Jassy noted that AWS is “thriving” and pointed out that the AI and self-developed chip business segments are experiencing strong momentum, with both posting annualized revenue over $25 billion and triple-digit year-on-year percentage growth. Amazon also raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast from $200 billion to $220 billion.

Therefore, Amazon’s current logic for layoffs is more closely related to excess hiring during the pandemic, necessitating corporate streamlining, and the fact that AI is increasing per capita productivity, leading the company to cut redundant positions and redeploy human and capital resources to strategic areas such as AI, cloud computing, chips, and robotics.