Amazon Layoffs 2026: Second Round Planned
Amazon layoffs will resume with a planned second round of corporate job cuts targeting management layers, prompting investors to reassess operating costs.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Second round would bring combined corporate reductions to about 30,000.
- Reported targets include AWS, Retail, Prime Video and People Experience and Technology.
- Framed as trimming management layers, the move would reshape near-term operating-cost assumptions.
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Amazon (AMZN) plans a second round of corporate layoffs targeting multiple units as it continues to trim management layers, extending a multiyear pattern of workforce reductions.
Second Round Targets Corporate Roles
Reports on Jan. 22, 2026, said the second round of layoffs could begin as early as Jan. 27 and would eliminate thousands of corporate jobs. Combined with the roughly 14,000 positions cut in October 2025, total corporate reductions would reach about 30,000.
Corporate Headcount and Rationale
Amazon’s corporate workforce totals about 350,000 of its roughly 1.57–1.58 million global employees. The planned cuts would reduce about 8.6% of that headcount, reflecting a significant rebalancing of management and administrative roles.
Affected units likely include Amazon Web Services, Retail, Prime Video, and People Experience and Technology, the company’s human-resources division. The cuts span customer-facing and back-office functions, with the scope still evolving as unit-level decisions proceed.
At the 2025 third-quarter earnings call, Chief Executive Andy Jassy described the earlier layoffs as efforts to reduce excess management layers, emphasizing they were not primarily driven by financial pressures or artificial intelligence. In October 2025, affected employees remained on payroll for 90 days to seek internal openings, and managers could defer some reductions into early 2026. These steps follow prior rounds that cut about 27,000 jobs in late 2022 and early 2023.
Framed as structural management trimming rather than short-term cost cutting, the planned layoffs signal Amazon’s near-term corporate spending priorities. Given the company’s scale, how management executes the plan could influence analyst assumptions about AMZN’s operating costs and overhead for months.
