Amazon Layoffs 2026: Numbers, Timeline & What Is Known

This page is part of our tech layoffs tracker and records what Amazon has disclosed about its 2026 job cuts: the announced numbers, the dates of each round, the divisions named in reports, and what the company has said officially. Every figure below is sourced; where Amazon has not disclosed a number, that is stated rather than estimated.

Summary

Timeline of the 2026 rounds

January 28, 2026 — about 16,000 corporate roles

Amazon confirmed cuts of about 16,000 corporate jobs, announced in a message from HR chief Beth Galetti that the company published on its newsroom. CNBC reported the round as a continuation of the anti-bureaucracy restructuring started in October 2025; teams that had not finished their organizational changes in October completed them in this round. GeekWire put the combined total at roughly 30,000 roles since October 2025.

Terms reported by CBS News: US-based staff received 90 days to find a role internally; those who did not were offered severance pay, outplacement services, and health insurance benefits.

May 2026 — Selling Partner Services, count not disclosed

Amazon made further cuts in its Selling Partner Services organization, the unit that supports third-party marketplace sellers. Amazon did not disclose a headcount for this round.

July 22, 2026 — AGI unit, count not disclosed

Amazon cut roles in its artificial general intelligence unit, including model customization and post-training positions, per CNBC. The company declined to say how many people were affected. The cuts came alongside plans to raise capital spending to about 200 billion dollars in 2026, most of it for AI and cloud infrastructure.

Divisions affected

Amazon has not published a division-by-division breakdown. Based on employee reports and press coverage of the October 2025 and January 2026 rounds, the affected areas include:

• AWS — teams within the cloud unit, including professional services, though AWS sales and infrastructure hiring continued
• Alexa and devices
• Prime Video and Studios
• Advertising
• Human resources (People Experience and Technology)
• Retail, payments, logistics, and last-mile delivery corporate teams
• Video games
• Selling Partner Services (May 2026)
• AGI unit (July 2026)

The cuts are corporate and managerial. Warehouse, delivery, and data center operations staff — the majority of Amazon's roughly 1.5 million employees — were not the target of these rounds.

Official statements

In June 2025, CEO Andy Jassy told employees that AI efficiency gains would shrink the corporate workforce: "in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," per PBS.

Announcing the October 2025 round, Beth Galetti called AI "the most transformative technology we've seen since the internet" and framed the cuts as reducing layers and bureaucracy rather than cutting costs alone, per NBC News.

Asked in January 2026 whether broad reductions every few months were the new pattern, Galetti said: "That's not our plan."

Context: 2022 to 2025

The 2025-2026 restructuring differs from 2022-23 in stated cause: the earlier round was a correction after pandemic over-hiring, while the current one is framed around flattening management layers and AI-driven efficiency. Meta ran a comparable efficiency-framed reduction in 2023; see our Meta layoffs page for that timeline.

What it means for AWS customers

Amazon has not announced changes to AWS support plans, SLAs, or account management as a result of the layoffs. Reported cuts touched AWS professional services and some internal teams; core infrastructure operations were not reported affected. Practical effects customers have to watch for are the ordinary ones after any vendor reorganization: account manager turnover and slower responses on non-critical professional services engagements. If you see an account team change, confirm your support plan terms are unchanged — they are contractual and not tied to specific staff.

The same pressure Amazon cites — doing more with fewer corporate staff — applies to its customers. Organizations running lean internal IT teams after their own reductions often move routine server support and monitoring to an external provider rather than backfilling roles.

FAQ

How many people has Amazon laid off in 2026?

About 16,000 corporate roles were confirmed in January 2026, plus smaller rounds in May (Selling Partner Services) and July (AGI unit) for which Amazon disclosed no counts. Combined with the roughly 14,000 cut in October 2025, the total is roughly 30,000 roles — the largest reduction in the company's history.

Which divisions were affected?

Reports name AWS, Alexa, devices, Prime Video, advertising, HR, retail and logistics corporate teams, video games, Selling Partner Services, and the AGI unit. Amazon has not published an official breakdown. Warehouse and delivery operations were not the target.

Are more Amazon layoffs coming?

Amazon has not announced further rounds. Galetti said in January that regular broad reductions are "not our plan," but the company has continued smaller targeted cuts since then (May and July 2026), and Jassy's stated position is that AI efficiency gains will keep shrinking the corporate workforce over the next few years. Reuters reporting in October 2025 indicated the full plan could reach as many as 30,000 roles, a figure the disclosed rounds have now met.

What severance did laid-off employees get?

For the January 2026 US round: 90 days to find another internal role, and for those who did not, severance pay, outplacement services, and health insurance benefits. Terms vary by country.