Amazon Laying Off 16K People—Will Amazon Music Be Impacted?

Photo Credit: Anirudh

Amazon plans to eliminate around 16,000 corporate jobs in its second round of massive layoffs since October. Will Amazon Music be affected?

The bloodletting continues. On Wednesday—after an internal email leaked—Amazon announced plans to cut about 16,000 corporate jobs. It’s Amazon’s second round of major layoffs since October last year, when the company let 14,000 corporate employees go.

The job cuts are part of an ongoing effort to “strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” This, CNBC points out, coincides with the company’s greater push to heavily invest in AI.

In October, Amazon indicated that more cuts were on the way in 2026 as the company found “additional places we can remove layers.” Regardless, Amazon’s senior vice president of people, experience, and technology, Beth Galetti, said it was not the company’s desire to create “a new rhythm” of layoffs every few months.

“That’s not our plan,” said Galetti in an Amazon blog post. “But just as we always have, every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers, and make adjustments as appropriate.”

Amazon employees actually received an email about the forthcoming layoffs on Tuesday—which was apparently in error—and which acknowledged “organizational changes” at the company.

At the end of the third quarter, Amazon had around 1.58 million employees, but that number is overwhelmingly composed of warehouse and logistics workers. Altogether, the 30,000 job cuts since October make up around 10% of Amazon’s corporate and tech workforce, which makes up about 350,000 people.

Amazon laid off over 27,000 employees between 2022 and 2023 alone, and conducted a series of smaller cuts across the company in 2024.

Meanwhile, the company has been cutting costs in an effort to invest more heavily in AI and expand its data centers. This week, Amazon also ended its Fresh and Go grocery chains.

Its efforts to slash costs led the company to announce in October that it expects capital expenditures to reach $125 billion this year—the highest spending forecast among the major tech companies. Moreover, CEO Andy Jassy said in June that “efficiency gains” from AI would undoubtedly cause Amazon’s corporate headcount to fall over the next few years.