Amazon has confirmed plans to cut around 14,000 office jobs, after telling staff it needed to be “organised more leanly” to succeed in the age of AI.
The cuts – which represent about 4% of Amazon’s white-collar workforce – followed a warning from Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy to staff in June that AI would reduce demand for human workers.
The Grocer understands that while some of the 14,000 cuts will come from the UK’s 75,000-strong Amazon workforce, the plan does not affect Amazon’s recently announced £40bn UK investment to create “thousands” of jobs in the UK. These include two “state-of-the-art” fulfilment centres in Northampton and Hull.
In an October 27 letter to staff later posted publicly, Amazon’s senior VP of people Beth Galetti said the restructure was intended to follow through on Jassy’s ambitions to make Amazon operate “like the world’s largest startup”.
“The world is changing quickly,” Galetti said. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before – in existing market segments and altogether new ones.
“We’re convicted [sp] that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
Galetti thanked employees for the “significant work” they had already put into “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and helping reduce bureaucracy”.
Calling the 14,000 net reduction in roles a “continuation of this work”, Galetti said the company would continue to hire in “key strategic areas” while cutting out layers of management and finding more efficient ways of working.
The cuts have come despite strong growth at Amazon, which delivered a consensus-beating 13% revenue gain to take $167.7bn (£126.3bn) in Q2 2025, measured over the three months to 30 June. Operating profit jumped 30.6% to $19.2bn in the same period.
The job cuts have demonstrated “everything that’s wrong with the business”, according to GMB national secretary Andy Prendergast.
“Amazon cutting jobs while registering astronomical profits shows everything that’s wrong with the business,” he said.
“Bezos can spend billions launching celebrities into space and take over Venice for his wedding, but he can’t treat his loyal workforce with dignity. We will be supporting our members across Amazon as they face this uncertain future.”
No comments yet