Amazon layoffs: employees brace for a new round of corporate job cuts as restructuring widens

Amazon employees across several corporate divisions are bracing for fresh layoffs as early as Tuesday, January 27, 2026, as the company continues a broad effort to shrink its white-collar workforce and strip out layers of management. Amazon has not publicly confirmed the scope or timing of the next cuts, but the company has already signaled that corporate headcount reductions are a central part of its push to move faster and reduce internal bureaucracy.

The looming round follows a major workforce reduction announced in October 2025, when Amazon said it would eliminate about 14,000 corporate roles while continuing to hire in selected strategic areas. Together, the two phases are expected to bring the corporate reduction to roughly 30,000 roles.

What Amazon has already confirmed about the corporate reductions

In its October 2025 announcement, Amazon framed the corporate cuts as part of a rebalancing: reducing in some areas and hiring in others, with the net result being a smaller corporate workforce. The company also said it would prioritize internal hiring and generally give impacted employees time to seek other roles inside Amazon, with timing varying by local rules.

That approach matters now because many employees affected in October were given a limited period to remain on payroll and pursue internal transfers. For those workers, that window has been expiring in late January 2026, increasing the sense of urgency around new notices and reassignments.

Amazon leadership has also repeatedly emphasized organizational streamlining, including efforts to reduce bureaucracy and flatten teams by changing the ratio of individual contributors to managers. The workforce reductions fit within that broader theme: fewer layers, fewer handoffs, and faster decision-making.

Where the next layoffs are expected to hit and what remains unclear

Internal planning for the next phase has been widely discussed among employees because the cuts are expected to touch multiple high-profile parts of the corporate org chart. Units expected to be affected include Amazon Web Services, core retail operations, Prime Video, and the human resources organization known as People Experience and Technology.

Even with those areas flagged, key details remain unresolved publicly. Amazon has not issued an updated figure for how many roles would be eliminated in the new phase, whether certain locations will be more heavily impacted, or how the company will handle internal transfers this time.

Another open question is whether the next round will be delivered as a single wave or staggered by organization. For employees, that difference changes everything: a one-day notification concentrates disruption, while a staggered approach can keep teams in limbo longer.

How big this is relative to Amazon’s total workforce

Amazon’s overall headcount is far larger than its corporate population, with the majority of employees working in fulfillment centers, delivery operations, and warehouse roles. The corporate cuts, even at 30,000 roles, would represent a small fraction of Amazon’s total workforce, but they are sizable within the office-based organization.

The math is part of why the story resonates beyond Amazon. Amazon’s corporate workforce is roughly in the hundreds of thousands, so removing about 30,000 roles amounts to nearly a tenth of that segment. In practical terms, reductions of that size can alter product roadmaps, slow or cancel internal initiatives, and shift which teams have the staffing to execute priorities.

This would also be among the largest corporate workforce reductions in Amazon’s history, surpassing the roughly 27,000 roles the company cut in 2022. That comparison underscores how sustained the restructuring has become, spanning multiple years rather than a single corrective moment.

What employees are watching this week

For Amazon workers, the near-term focus is less about broad strategy and more about process and personal timelines. Many employees want clarity on whether the company will repeat the October playbook of a payroll transition period and internal job-search window, and what that means for benefits, vesting schedules, and relocation or remote-work eligibility.

Employees are also watching for signals about how Amazon will balance cost controls with investment in growth areas like AI tools, cloud infrastructure, and high-priority consumer products. A reduction can happen at the same time as targeted hiring, but the net effect on teams depends on where cuts land and how quickly internal transfers are approved.

A few practical questions that remain unanswered publicly, but are central to workers right now, include:

• Whether impacted employees will receive a defined internal transfer window again, and how long it will be

• Whether certain divisions will face deeper cuts due to consolidation of overlapping functions

• How quickly Amazon will backfill critical roles after teams are flattened

For now, the most concrete fact is the direction: Amazon is continuing to shrink its corporate ranks while reshaping how decisions move through the company. The next several days will determine whether this phase is a sharp, concentrated wave or the start of a longer sequence of reductions that stretches deeper into 2026.